Week 510 Wood working.

year 9, Week 40, Day One (week 510)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
10-17-09 Saturday

94 degrees, building clouds, almost no breeze. At around noon, thunder to the west and a grey wall approached. A cold front passed through, watering mom's plants for her. temps dropped to 81 degrees several hours after. Wetness was gone by one.
This weather report is brought to you by the city of Pompano Beach Department of Tourism.

The turning club meeting was on Thursday. I remembered about it on Monday. I headed home, with the idea of getting my face vase up to some presentable level. I got home, pulled the face vase out, looked it over, and realized nothing would make it presentable. It needed more work. I went there with nothing to show.
I did bring some swans to show. the originals I got my ideas from, the swan blanks I made to carve, and the finished (carved) swans. I also brought the blanks and finished carved owls. The head of the carving club liked the results.
They had a Christmas Ornament challenge. Everybody was to make a Christmas ornament to show off. Everybody who brings an ornament in for the challenge gets a raffle ticket. They are also collecting ornaments to go onto a tree that is donated to the FORT LAUDERDALE ART MUSEUM and sold to fund museum projects. We, with three other wood groups, get a large tree and decorate them with wood ornaments. the tree always sells the first night, when the benefactors get to see the trees first.
Anyway, for the ornament Challenge, if you donated four or more ornaments to the tree, you also got a raffle ticket. later, instead of judging the ornaments, they draw three raffle tickets and the winners get gift cards.
The purpose of the challenge is to get people to make something they might never make on their own.
The demonstration was on the BOWL SAVER, a bowl coring system. This is a device that allows you to core out three or more bowls out of the same piece of wood, rather than turning the inside into shavings. It was a great demonstration. I had some questions about the process and that answered those questions really well. It is easier than I thought it was. I do see that it takes a lot more setup than I prefer to apply to most projects. Once one does it a few times, the bowl aver can be left set to do more.
The real use of the BOWL SAVER is to rough out a whole bunch of wood to dry out. Wood moves and shifts as they dry. One usually cuts a bowl about an inch thick, let it dry, warping and twisting. One then mounts it bak on the lathe and true it up and turn it to the finished thickness.
If I was spending more time on the lathe, I would likely get a bowl saver to get more out of my wood.
They had a wood raffle outside the meeting place after the club meeting. I was good. I left without any wood at all. I have plenty of wood, if I put it to use.

We started the morning yard sailing again. I think I spent about eight bucks and did well. WE got home sooner than it seamed.

The cat was not at his best. He was still a good kitty cat compared to the beginning of the year. Mom and I did well in taming him these past two years.

The flower vase needed a pot on the bottom of it, something the flowers were growing out of. I mounted the vase on the lathe and turned the pot. I do have one little thing that needs correcting, but it makes a big difference in how it will work out. I still have all the flowers to carve, but now it has something to make it work right. Tomorrow, if weather permits, will be when I make the correction to the flower pot.

I drew on the eyes of the face vase. I then went to mom and asked her to draw the eyes for me. Just a couple extra lines gave me what I needed. I carved most of one eye, using power, then stopped do to incoming weather. it will make a difference. I am carving on and around a knot so it will take some work. The rest of the faces do need correcting.

I cut a piece of wire from a coat hanger and spent some time to get is bent with the right curves, but straight in other directions. This coat wire is a gauge for thickness, calipers. With a little bending or squeezing, I can set it to the thickness I am after and stick one end inside. If the outside is touching while the inside is also touching, then the wood is thick. if there is a slight gap, the wood is thin. I checked the thickness of the thinnest part of the carvings and still have good amount of wood in there. I have room to make corrections on the faces.

I closed up everything, packed everything away after the stuff mentioned above. I headed in through the door and felt a few drips on my arm, I got inside just before the cloud burst. that basically ended my day.

Tomorrow, I plan to work on the face vase and if I do really good on that, I might start on the flower vase. I do want to correct the flower pot on the flower vase.
I will see what I really do tomorrow.


year 9, Week 40, Day Two (week 510)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
10-18-09 Sunday

56 degrees in the morning, 62 degrees when I arrived at Mom's house, I think it got up into the 80s, but I was not home when it got up there. There was a pretty good breeze as certain parts of the day. The sky was a mix of high feathery sheets and roaming puffs and blue sky.
The cold front that passed yesterday hit us with really cold weather, for Florida, especially this time of year. When I got to Mom's house, I did not need a coat as it warmed up enough.
This weather report is brought to you by the Pompano Beach Department of Tourism.

I petted the cat once I got out back. he was not on his best moods. I seamed to either miss the attention he was after, or hitting the wrong kind of attention.

Mom had tried to move a coconut palm but it had gone through the pot and into the ground. She butchered the roots in the process. I decided I would turn a bowl out of it. I had to cut it about three different times, turning once in between, before I got to the actual wood of the palm tree.
the coconut palm has a rough, bare bark, and then the fronds on top. I found that the fronds were not part of the wood. when I got to the rough bark, that was where anything that resembled wood was found. The three foot tall tree turned out to be only three inches of bowl.
I left the bark in place, untouched, and hollowed the inside. I guess I can describe turning the inside as cutting cantilope or a pumpkin. A "muck" came out in globs. there are fibers on the inside, but not much. I got close to the bottom and stopped.. I cleaned the bottom by bandsawing the tenon and left it as that.
I did stick it in mineral spirits as a way to possibly keep it from rotting, which is something that palm wood loves to do.
When I got home, I found I left my varnish can open and it gooped up, unusable. I am also out of mineral spirits at home. I mixed the last of my mineral spirits into the varnish, got some to pour out, gave the bowl the best coating I could do and left it in a closed baggy. will see how it reacts over the week.

I was carving the eyes on the face vase. I had done some of the work on all eyes, when my brother called. He was going some place when the transmission died right near us. That killed my woodworking for the day.

I got my sister in law and brought her to Mom's house, then went back. When the wrecker was to arrive, I was to sit by his trailer until he got back. We ended up unloading the truck, filling the trailer and my little pickup, and the wrecker still would not lift the truck onto the bed. they used "plan B" and towed it with the hind tires on the road. They got half way to my brother's house when it got so bad they had to leave the truck. My brother got his other truck and came back. We picked up the stuff that did not fit on my truck, and we went to where his truck was parked. We unhooked the drive shaft, using the setting sun to light the underside of the truck. We got to his house to unload my truck when dusk was disappearing.
He still had to get some stuff and go to the truck to tow it home, but I was allowed to go home, in time to get to bed on time for work.
I did have my carving basket with me, but and planned on carving. I left my carving gloves at home and decided I was not really in the mood, rather sit and read.

I got more exercise than normal, It was not hard work but more than I normally get.

Next week, I will see how this palm bowl survives. they are notorious for rotting fast as there is so much water in the wood. Some palm trees can be carved, some cannot. Will see how this survives.
I will work on the face bowl, see how it comes out. It has a lot of work to be done just in carving, not even mentioning finishing.
I still have ornaments to be carved and I have to have them ready by November.

I will see what happens next week.