Woodturning Design - A New Look at an Old Question

I was looking at an old hard drive and some of the pictures on it, deciding what to keep, when I stumbled on some pictures of the progressive turning of a birch hollow form from some years back. It all started as a sort of mess; a crotch piece with branch growing from it, maybe six inches thick and 7 or so across and about 8 inches long. So it would have two centers from the trunk and two more from the secondary trunk and branch. Each of these is a familiar split area and also a spot of elongation as the piece dries  and settles.

On the other hand it should have some great feathering pattern from the crotch and other patterns around the branch entry and each center. A hollow form should show all of these with a little planning.

I thought this would be a good time to ask those old questions of what makes a good design for a woodturning? So I decided to introduce a section to around the woods. For now it will start with getting from there to here. 

As time progresses I hope to bravely consider what makes good design and get shot for it or at least to start some dialogue going. It should be fun. I will also link to a few other places where I have commented on the thought processes that go into the pieces I have turned. Some good and some mistakes. One or two have ended up in the fire not because they split or came apart on the lathe but because they looked like crap. Future ones like that I will photograph and we can all pick them apart. Like I say, it should be fun.

Making Wooden Bowls: Thickness Considerations For The Woodturner

   When making wooden bowls the woodturner enters a world of creation that is thousand of years old. People have been using bowls for a long time and making them just as long. The same design questions that face the potter also face the woodturner. One of these is just how thin or how thick to make the vessel walls. Some questions need to be answered to give some guidlines.

  First of all there is the intended use of the bowl. Is it going to be functional such as a salad bowl or is the intention to be visual as an art piece? Generally, a functional bowl will be thicker so as to give stability and a sense of security. Artistic turnings may be extremely thin to give a sensation of lightness and perhaps an ephemeral quality. On the other hand a different artistic turning may be very thick and heavy to present other feelings and qualities to the beholder.

A third category may be a bowl made to impress and perhaps to impress woodturners in particular. In that case it may be so thin as to allow light to pass through the oiled wood. To make one of these, woodturners hang lights behind the turning piece and thin the bowl to allow an even distribution of light through the walls. It is a good test of skill and a learning experience.

   Functional bowls should have walls that are thin enough to work with the intention of the piece and thick enough to seem right. As a rule of thumb and eighth of an inch of thickness for every inch of diameter seems about right with a bit more for six inches and under and a bit less for bowls over sixteen inches. So an eight inch bowl might be one quarter inch thick while a six inch bowl could be three sixteenths and a sixteen inch bowl, three eighths. Most of the time the best thing to do is not to worry about the exact measurement so much as the look and feel.

   Where the bowl is to be used is also a consideration. Restaurants may have a certain criteria they want followed while a bowl turned for the outdoor deck on a summer night might have walls an inch thick. The popcorn may blow away but the bowl will still be there.

   Most of the time the best thing to do is relax and make the bowl. If the lines look good and the bowl feels right, chances are the design is good. Sometimes all the practise pays off and the bowl looks absolutely fabulous. The hunt make all the turning just that bit more special.

Next Burl

So here is a picture of the next spruce burl on the lathe. it was wrapped around a branch as you can see. One of the things I think is going on in the branch is tension that may lead to a split, but that should not matter in a decorative piece like this will be. There are a lot of worm holes in this one. I suspect the spruce bark beetle. It has decimated some of the stands around here although nothing like the pine bark beetle has done out west.

This one is a lot of fun. I will try to get a couple of pages up on the web site in a couple of days.

Squirrel Distractions

This is one of those days when I can not seem to get any turning done. Wood had to be cut for winter warmth, I have both a church service tomorrow and a friend's funeral to prepare, and the phone keeps ringing. I glanced at the pine tree outside the window just to be thinking of wood when another distraction hit, or chewed.

A squirrel had managed to chew one side of the bird feeder so at to loosen the cap and then get it off so the feeder hung from one side. I got some cool pictures of the we beastie having the meal of his life before I went out and fixed the feeder.

Persistence is necessary if you plan to turn wood. Mistakes teach but only if you take up the gouge or skew or what have you to make another cut or a whole new piece. The squirrel is a good argument for try and try again. I wonder if he could be trained to sand bowls?

We will not mention the cats who are still trying to get the squirrel. :-)

New Wood Turning Challenge

The vacation trip is going well. We have moved my daughter into her new apartment and she has a cat, which I am told is necessary in order to have a true home. I have had little time to see any wood turnings except for a few which my daughter and my son have. I am amazed to see the pieces and realize that I have turned them. Often they look better after I have been away from them for a while. At one of the hotels we stayed at I saw an interesting lamp in some sort of mass produced porcelain. I think it will make a nice wood turned lamp when all is said and done. The body could be a hollow form to reduce weight and the top and base could be turned in contrasting woods. I think I will make the base round instead of square. Comments?

Wood turning

I got back in the shop today for a while and started turning some cooking spoons for a friend. They are about 13" long with a slightly offset handle. Unfortunately, now that the turning is done, it is time to carve the bowls of the spoons. Not my favorite thing, but necessary. I will eventually get a page up about it but I am also trying to get some beginner pages up on tool selection, sharpening and the like. It is a pleasure to be turning spindles again. Maybe I will put the faceplate stuff on indefinite hold and do some more spindle work. We'll see.

The Stronger Pull

Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.

Rumi(13th Century Persian Mystic on Creativity)

Every piece of wood is a mystery. Sometimes the mystery is less as we work with debarked and smooth boards, but often it is a wonder as bark is removed and color and texture are revealed. We are also a solitary people most of the time, working alone to uncover the secrets of a piece of wood, itself a mysterious thing created to enrich the world.

This sense of mystery itself generates a sense of wonder and of love. That love may be one for creation itself embodied in the amazement of the wood, or an expression born of oneself for the recipient of the piece. That recipient may not even be known to us. It may be a buyer or for that matter the receiver of the gift the buyer has gotten. Yet there can be a love that reaches out to the unknown person, themselves part of God's creation.

Sometimes of course the person is known and the love is obvious. But what of the time when the person for whom the piece is destined is known but not loved in the classic sense? Then is there not a love for the wood, for the work, and for the integrity of creation that fills the piece? Or is this something to be sought, time and again?

wood turning out of confusion

"Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, find opportunity."

A. Einstein

I am in my annual or semiannual or whatever, 'clean the workshop' mode. As you can see I am also at the computer, fighting the mode well. At times the clutter is overwhelming and it needs to be cleaned. Sometimes it leads to more than a clean shop. A while ago it meant more turning when part of the cleaning was the intention of moving some wood out of the way. You might call it a bit of simplicity from the clutter and some harmony from the discord of walking through the mess.

I wonder how much turning results from the thoughts of cleaning a messed up shop and finding another log to work with or saying "I thought I was going to make a ### with that?" How many shapes have we just put in drawers or on shelves before picking up a piece of wood to move and seeing a curve just like the one on the pliers handle and saying "aha!"

Then of course there are the 'oopses' in turning. A side too thin or an intended bowl that is now a funnel. Design opportunities from accident. Opportunities in difficulty. Neat stuff. Einstein had a lot to say to a wood turner.

Fun and creation

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)

Now here is a thought for the day or so. A lot of the time at the lathe is more fun than creative, at least for me. I tend to turn a lot of things the "same." You know the way, twenty or thirty pens, a dozen spatulas, a bunch of bowls or whatever. Sure, each one is slightly different, but they are really not "one of a kind" except in the manner that every piece of wood is different.
Still, there is a feel of creation going on. In fact, this side of God, we always see what no one else has seen as the bark peels away and a new face of wood is revealed. A glimpse of creation as it were. Perhaps if we let this gel along with the shear fun of turning, creativity results in some new pieces. Sometimes we just need to play.