…have I mentioned how much fun this all is!?!

We began Week 3 on Monday, where we left off the previous Friday — in the lathe room. The entire class was excited because with the lathe, it is a bit magical how you take a piece of wood and can quickly make something from it.  I spent the morning doing more practice with the various gouges, and making a series of shapes as you can see from the picture.

In the afternoon I worked on making my own mallet which was cool, because I had been using one from our classroom, and now I have my own.  It was such an interesting process, and I’m pleased with out it turned out.  I had wanted to make it a bit bigger, but in the end this is exactly the right size.  I finished it with sanding, burnishing and then a trick of rubbing a wire on some of the grooves and areas to create dark accent lines.

Tuesday morning we were back in the lathe room, and now we turned our attention to another big topic of lathe work – the turning of a bowl!  I can see the appeal, as if you get good at it, you can just make one in one session.  I will add, the idea of “getting good” I soon realized is much harder than turning mallets and the like.  In fact, after spending a lot of time working on the shape of my bowl on the outside, and sanding and burnishing it, I was ready to flip it around and begin the process of hollowing out the bowl.  

The obvious challenge is not making the sides of the bowl too thin and ruining the bowl, but for me, I never got there.  Because another tough skill to learn is just how to “ride the bevel” when hollowing out so as to remove wood but not have the tool bite and take a chunk.  And I suffered a dual disaster, first I let the gouge slip and took a chunk out of the lip of my bowl. 

I took a deep breath, and I thought I could probably fix that later by finishing the bown and then just cutting the top inch or less off the bowl (a much shallower bowl than originally planned, if you will).  However, I never got there because only a few minutes later, I missed again and the gouge caught the inside of the bowl in the wrong place and just ripped the bowl out of the chuck, and in the process breaking the piece used to hold the bowl to the lathe. 

So it was officially over for that bowl.  I still have it, as I want to keep it as a reminder of what I still have to do for learning, but it meant that after several hours of work, I needed to start again.  And so I did.  And I got to the place where I had a half-finished bowl which is ready to be hollowed out again, but alas the day was over, and our time in the lathe room was too and so I still have the half completed bown which I will finish when I have some free time during our projects, which I will before the end of the course.

Remember: No mistakes, just more learning. 🙂

Wednesday was back downstairs in our new work room (we got to pick our own benches and store our tools there, instead of locking in lockers every night which is kind of fun).  Anyway, it is on to the nightstand project in earnest today.  We spent the day focused on the process of wood selection or “shopping” in our machine room.  It is how to select boards, which is key when boards are actually rough milled so you don’t always have a true sense of what the wood will look like when fully milled and finished. 

And so we selected our primary and secondary wood, and then marked out our components in chalk on each board to ensure we had enough to source the parts.  And this first step of milling was really fun because it was the first time we were really working on our true project vs exercises, the stakes are higher, as are the rewards! 

Also, we took a few of our parts, those we were going to use first, over to the jointer to establish a flat face and perpendicular edge, then on to the planer for a rough smooth so that we have taken maybe an 1/16 or bit more off each side and then let sit, stickered, overnight to see if there will be more movement from the wood.  Believe it or not, if you cut out a piece from a ten foot board and then surface it lightly, you can get a fair bit of movement.  So that is where we left it for the night.

Starting on Thursday, I was eager to get back in to see if we had any significant wood movement, which I did not, and so then went for another round of milling on the leg blanks and side aprons.  We learned another table saw technique, rip cuts (with the grain) and what you need to consider, from setup to safety, to blade selection.

But in the end, much of the day was a day of joinery with mortise and tenon joinery for the legs and aprons. It is amazing how time can fly with complete focus, and detailed work makes for a full and tiring day.  

On Friday we focused on cross cuts for some more parts milling and continued joinery work (cross cutting, it cutting across the grain on the table saw in this case).  It may be hard to understand how it can take so long, but honestly we spend a good amount of time on the machine training for each phase and new skill, which includes Nick explaining all the safety items, then demonstrating the machine setup and milling of the actual part.  Then our first time, we demonstrate to him we learned it and get coaching.

So in the above, the milling for legs involves rip cutting (length wise, which has the need for certain techniques and special setup so that when you mill four legs, they are all the same width and thickness, true and square and all exactly the same which includes some final planing work). 

In the end, it was another full day, and I learned a ton, some new, and a lot that I kind of remembered from years ago but honestly would have struggled to get it all right, especially the sequencing and considerations for future steps.  I will explain that last bit next week when I talk about tapering the legs for those who like this level of detail. And for those who aren’t as interested, I’d just say it was another great week! 🙂