Rommy plan

Kids of every generation get a bad rap. When I was a kid, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden were certain to corrupt every kid that listened to their music. I dated a girl who dyed her hair blue. Horrors. Things havent really changed that much: we latch on to a few examples of "kids gone bad", ignoring the fact that most kids are like we were and do some really cool stuff.

My son Wyatt is rehearsing for a musical. He goes to school at 7:30 in the morning and gets out at 6:00 in the evening when rehearsal ends. He rehearses every Saturday from 9:00 to 3:00. Starting next week he has two weeks of rehearsing until 10:00 at night. And Sundays are thrown in too. He does that, squeezes in homework, and even managed to go to the Homecoming dance last week. My schedule was never any where near that daunting.

Austin

Over on my Facebook page, Austin Hall posted his first woodworking project. He is 12 and has a very limited set of tools: a handsaw, a drill bit, a sander, a protractor, a ruler, and glue, yet managed to design and build a birdhouse. (Im pretty sure my first project was a birdhouse, too.)  To make the hole, he drilled a series of holes around a circle and popped it out. Having a desire to achieve something is the first step in any process.

Hi Everyone,

Well, its getting cold again and the weather folks tell us that the Twin Cities is about to get clobbered by a snow storm:




Well bring it on--time to get down to the wood shop and go to work!! Yea baby!!

More laminated bowls-Discussion and Plans

For those of you who follow the blog regularly, youll know that I got a giant pile of hickory as a Christmas present last year and Ive been working on using it up. That means using that wood as efficiently as possible so Ive been doing a lot of laminating of late. My latest two efforts revolve around
using up some of the larger flat boards and some of the small pieces that I have so were going to make a medium-sized salad bowl and a nut bowl. Heres how:

Salad bowl

When I laminate wood I generally orient the flat face of the individual wood pieces vertically because I  really love the way that this type of laminated block looks. It emphasizes the grain and because laminated blocks are made of separate pieces of wood, I can play around with grain patterns and color. This time however, Im going to orient the faces horizontally like a stack of pancakes.

So Ive dug into the wood pile and extracted several hickory boards on the basis of the width of the board and its color:



And Im going to add a section of walnut that will become the rim of the bowl.

Next, were going to cut these boards into 11 1/2" wide sections on the table saw:



Im going to take this inside and glue it later on today. I think this will result in a very cool looking bowl.

While I was at it I came across that piece of monkey puzzle wood I got for Christmas and I cut it into medium-sized blanks that will eventually become a pair of bowls for some lucky person:

Monkey puzzle wood (and no, I dont know why its called that) is a tree that grows in tropical regions and this particular piece came from Florida. Its supposed to be very irritating wood to work with but so far so good. Well see what happens.

Next, since I wasnt completely frozen through, I decided to take some of the small pieces of hickory that I have and make a blank to make a nut bowl out of.

Hickory is a wonderful wood. The color ranges from butter yellow to deep browns, greens, and even wine reds and pinks and its ideal for any type of wood turning. Its also great for laminations because the color varies so much. So its a very good wood and it also has a wonderful scent. My shop smells great.

I cut up the smaller pieces and assembled them and didnt quite have enough pieces to make the blank as wide as I needed it so I cut more hickory and then I remembered a very thin piece of rosewood that I bought last year:




Even though this is a very thin piece of wood, it was hard to cut it on the table saw.


Here is the bowl stack at present:

Once this is glued up, it will make a very nice nut bowl.

Since its beginning to get really cold, Im going to stop and take the laminating blanks inside so they can warm up. Hickory is a very dense wood and if its too cold, the glue wont dry so everything has to warm up to at least 65 degrees before I can laminate it. Thats ok as I think its time to stop and get something hot to drink.

Im going to glue up at least one of the bowl blanks tonight, probably the nut bowl. As soon as Im ready to put it on the lathe, Ill let you know with another posting.

And another bit of news: I found out Im on the deans list at school--not bad for a wood shop critter!! I think Ill reward myself by going out and buying some red-colored wood!

Thanks for stopping by for a visit. Come back again soon as we always have more adventures in the wood shop.  Ill see you soon.

VW