In My "Spare" Time: Year 19, Week 09, Day One (week 999)

Year 19, Week 09, Day One (week 999)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
03-09-19 Saturday

Partly cloudy some sun, a few showers early morning just enough to get you scrambling but not really get you wet before it was gone. 64 early morning, 81 by noon, light breeze and plenty of sunshine. This weather report is brought to you by The Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.

FRIDAY

A couple months ago, Harbor Freight had a sidewalk sale, and I bought a sidewalk. This time they had a parking lot sale and I bought a parking lot. There were a couple things I really wanted and this gave me the chance to pick some things up. I did not intend to come home with all that I ended up with. A small shopping cart sat right near where I parked so I rescued it. I intended to leave it with its mommy. As I went through the stuff on display outside, a few things ended up in the cart. I then went through the store and more stuff ended up in the cart. There was no way I could carry all that in my arms so I kidnaped the cart and emptied the contents into my truck and left the cart in the parking lot again, not far from where I found it.

Saturday

I got out back, laid out my Friday finds so mom could see them. I decided to work on a platter. I took out a blank and mounted it in the lathe. This time I used my sanding disk to back it up instead of the chuck. The chuck does have some advantages. If I ran the boards through a thickness planer to flatten them, things would be easier in this project. I am using commercial two by yellow pine that has been around for a lot of years and the blanks have been cut and trimmed for a lot of years also.
From experience, I learned that you do the inside of the platter first. Yellow pine will move, (bend or cup) as you remove the wood because stresses are released so, because less wood is removed from the inside, it is better to do the inside first.
I was working with the blank that I had knocked the corners off a couple weeks ago. It was a good piece of wood to work with.
Once I got the bottom, the flat part of the plate as deep as I felt it should go, I did some clean up cuts and then sanded it.
I took the sanding disk off and put the chuck back on. The sanding disk is smaller than the plate. The chuck, opened wide, is still slightly smaller than the flat center so it will hold it flat and in place.
I had previously marked the center by running lines corner to corner before knocking off the corners. I found they were a little off. I ended up measuring across it and marking the center of the measurement, turning a little doing it again. I finally found what was close to center. Even so I was slightly off. A tiny bit off shows up big. I rounded the outside again and then worked on the back of the platter. I always inset the center and make a ring for the plate to sit on, then taper the rest of the platter to be fairly close to the angle of the front of the platter.
I would cut a little bit, then I would hear the thump, thump, thump. I would level it out then I would get the thumping again. I got it as thin as I figured it should be and as close to level as It was going to get, and I did a little clean up cuts and sanded it.
It is not the best I have ever done, but it is not the worst. It was a lot of fun to be creating something and getting results.
I piled up the sawdust and photographed it to show what about 1 1/2 inches wood looks like when converted into shavings.

By then I had done enough and needed to go onto some non-project activities.

I will see what I do tomorrow.

Year 19, Week 09, Day two (week 999)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
03-10-19 Sunday

There was drips on my windshield but the day otherwise sunny with light high clouds and lower puffs migrating across the sky. Morning temps were 74 very early, 77 when I hit the road and 81 in the afternoon with a nice breeze keeping things cool This weather report is brought to you by The Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.

I was kind of excited by the results I had yesterday. Years ago, I had practiced making platters with the intent of demonstrating the process of making them. Life got in the way and never did the demonstration. I never really got back into making the platters. I have a whole bunch of the platters stacked up waiting for the next step. The platters were initially rough turned but never cleaned up, sanded or have the center post removed.
Today, I decided to do some clean up on them. One by one, I mounted them in the lathe and sanded them with 40 grit belt sander paper. Some I took out my turning tools in an attempt to clean them up some more. I did pretty good on most of them, though all will need much more work. The fact that the wood has moved/warped made this a tough project.
My lathe has an adjustable pulley. I turn a knob and the lathe will speed up or slow down, depending on how wide the pulley is. On the slowest, I get some slippage as I need a new belt. This one is quite worn. (I did a quick look on line a couple weeks ago and the belt is not available from Delta any more) I made use of the slippage at times because the pressure of the sandpaper on the wood would slow the spin down. This allowed the sandpaper to follow the curve of the wood better, getting some bad spots better.
I went through each platter, sometimes using tools to clean some spots, other times just sandpaper. Since I have yet to cut the posts off, I figured some places will require more dedicated sanding at the same time I remove the remains of the posts.
When I was done, I had 13 fairly good platters. There was one platter than looked like it was not going to be rescued. I figured I might toss it later so I left it till last. I finished rough cleaning the other platters and decided to work on this bad one.
There was a knot that the middle had broke out of, and there were deep gouges where the wood warped badly and the tool dug in. I used a scraping cut to even out the gouges some, and then sanded with the 40 grit sandpaper. I had not expected it to be better when I was done. It still is not close to being good, but it is a tiny bit better than it was before.
That gives me 14 platters to work with. Really only 13.

One problem of power sanding, is that each method does its own damage. The lathe generally has parallel grooves going around the piece. Sanding with a drill leaves circular gouges, the belt sanders leaves straight gouges, the dremmel leaves little dimple marks.
The question is as to whether the damage caused by the power tool will be less than the damage you are trying to clean up. One ends up hand sanding when all is said and down. These platters are going to be a multi weekend project and I do not know how excited I will be about it next time I get out there. I usually work on what excites me and it might not be the project I worked on before.

Last week I had started a cup before I cleaned up. It was still in the chuck when I needed to use the chuck for the platters. I took it off and decided I’m not really happy with it. It could well migrate into the garbage can.

I will see what I do next weekend

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