Seafoam Woodturning

Dibbling in the garden

2011-07-31T10:53:00.001-03:00

If you are planting a really big garden, the tractor towed dibbler these folks are using may be the way you need to go:

If your gardening ambitions aren't quite so large, one of my handcrafted wooden dibblers will probably get the job done.

Winter wonderland

2010-02-19T12:53:00.002-04:00

Winter seems to be largely passing us by here at Seafoam. Ok, we have had some cold snaps, and a few snow storms, but by and large this winter has been quite kind to us. In the workshop, this is a season to regroup and prepare for busier times in the year ahead, so there are no big stories to post about, just a lot of bits and pieces.

We will get the bad news over and done with right away. After many years of no price increases, I have had to put my flat-rate shipping charge up to $8.00. Canada Post have been pushing their prices up a little every year, so now I have had to follow suit. Don't forget that this is a flat rate, and no matter how many spurtles or wine stoppers you buy, you only pay $8.00, so it pays to buy multiple items in one order - many of my most popular products make great gifts and you will be sure to find a home for them sooner or later.

I have also had to push up the price on the wedding favours. This is largely due to using a better grade of cork. The quality I was getting from my previous supplier was becoming very poor, with lots of splits and voids, so I am now using FLOR grade cork. This is the highest grade of cork when inspected visually for the amount and size of pores (lenticels), bark, belly and cracks found on its surface.[1] However, I currently have a sale on, and you can save 10% by placing your order before April 30. I hope that this will encourage early orders, since I often have to turn down orders during the busy summer wedding season.

The Google car toured Pictou County last summer and Seafoam Woodturning Studio is now on Google Street View. You can find us at 45.788618,-62.999807. It looks like Pat and I were outside enjoying a cup of tea when they went by.

(For those that haven't used Street View, zoom in on the map as far as it will let you, then drag the little orange man until his green circle is over the green arrow. That will show you a picture which you can pan around and zoom in.)

It isn't often that I take on commissions, but when I was asked to make a mock ceremonial mace that would be used in anti-prorogation efforts, I decided to have a go. The mace is in two parts. It started off as one piece in Halifax, and went on to Yellowknife. It was then divided, one piece going to Fredericton and the other to Vancouver. Its amazing to see that they have daffodils in flower out on the west coast.

Tomorrow (Saturday, 20 February 2010) I will be at Dartmouth Farmer's Market in Alderney Landing, so if you happen to be in Metro, do come and say hi. I shall probably be back there occasionally for the next few months. Now that I go to so many markets, I usually post them to twitter to avoid filling this blog up with posts about markets.

On Tuesday I have a TV crew coming to tape a little piece for Eastlink. I shall probably be turning a bowl. Guess I had better go and tidy up the workshop!

2009 Craft Shows

2009-11-11T13:12:00.003-04:00

I have two shows lined up this month;

This coming Saturday and Sunday, November 14–15, 2009, the 21st Annual Festive Craft Market at the NSAC, Bible Hill, Nova Scotia.

The following weekend, Friday - Sunday, November 20-22, 2009, the Christmas Craft Expo at Acadia University in Wolfville. I have a few customer appreciation tickets to give away, to save you the $5.00 admission fee. If you would like one or two, drop me an email with your mailing address and I will pop them in the post.

Some new weedpots

2009-06-05T11:43:00.003-03:00

The farmers market season has already begun. Most weekends will find me at Antigonish on Saturday morning between 8am and noon. I just started a twitter feed, so you can get more uptodate information of my whereabouts at twitter.com/SeafoamWoodturn.

This week I made some weedpots. Some are quite unusual, having natural edges and the like. The large ones are Black Ash, the ones with the bark still on are Striped Maple.

Fall 2008 markets

2008-10-07T10:00:00.003-03:00

I have a quite heavy schedule this fall season for your Christmas shopping pleasure. I have three venues in Nova Scotia, and one in New Brunswick - Antigonish Farmers' Market, Moncton Market, Festive Craft Market (NSAC Truro), Sunnyside Mall Craft Market (Bedford).

October 11 - Antigonish
October 18 - Moncton
October 25 - Antigonish
November 1 - Moncton
November 2 - Sunnyside Mall
November 8 - Antigonish
November 9 - Sunnyside Mall
November 15/16 - Truro
November 22 - Antigonish
November 23 - Sunnyside Mall
November 29 - Moncton
November 30 - Sunnyside Mall
December 6 - Antigonish
December 7 - Sunnyside Mall
December 13 - Moncton
December 14 - Sunnyside Mall
December 20 - Antigonish
December 21 - Sunnyside Mall

Market schedule

2008-06-13T10:00:00.002-03:00

Here is my schedule for the markets I will be at for the next eight weeks:

June 14 - Moncton
June 21 - Antigonish
June 28 - Antigonish
July 5 - Moncton
July 12 - Antigonish
July 19 - Moncton
July 26 - Moncton
August 2 - Antigonish

Moncton Market is open from 7am to 2pm, and Antigonish Farmer's Market from 8am to noon. After August, the plan is that I will be rotating alternate weekends. I have teamed up with Mary from Fibrepalooza so that between us, we can commit to take a space at these markets on a regular basis. This makes it easier for the market managers to assign a permanent spot for us, while we get to go to different locations.

Pictou Weekend Market opens for the summer on 21 June and you can visit my booth there on Saturday and Sunday from 10am till 5pm.

An audio-visual presentation

2008-05-28T15:04:00.002-03:00

I just love free stuff online. Don't you? Here is a neat little service that made it easy for me to create an audio-visual presentation of some of my work. Enjoy!

The service is called Animoto, and the music is Coquetry by McKenzie Stubbert.

The latest crop of dibbers

2008-05-26T15:53:00.002-03:00

Many people believe that I spend hours working at the lathe, but the reality is that woodturning is more like gardening. Here is the latest crop of garden dibbers emerging from a bin full of wood shavings.

I'm just about to go and harvest this crop and treat them with linseed oil, then they will be ready to go to market.

May markets

2008-05-15T12:49:00.003-03:00

This coming Saturday (May 17, 2008) I will be at Moncton Market again, and the weekend after is the opening of Antigonish Farmer's Market, so I hope to be there for that.

I'm not sure how the rest of the year is going to pan out. Ideally I would like to be at Antigonish every other weekend, then alternate between Moncton and Tatamagouche on the other weekends. This takes a fair bit of co-operation on the part of the market managers, and although they always do their best to accommodate my requests, I will have to wait and see how things work out.

I also hope to get the studio open at Seafoam this weekend. It's a bit of a mess at the moment, cluttered with product packed in boxes ready to go to the market, and boxes of part finished salad bowls. Still, I hope to find space for it all somewhere very soon, and can clean the gallery and put some work on the shelves.

See you soon I hope!

Tatamagouche Farmer's Market

2008-04-21T18:51:00.003-03:00

Last weekend's gig in Moncton was a great success and I hope to be back there again soon. This coming weekend I am staying closer to home and going to Tatamagouche Farmer's Market on Saturday. It is open from 8am - 12pm at Creamery Square. See you there!

Moncton Market

2008-04-15T17:24:00.003-03:00

This Saturday, 19 April 2008, I am setting up my booth at Moncton Market, my first ever show in New Brunswick. Parlez vous Englais, sil vous plait!

It seems to be a very busy place, and I look forward to making lots of new acquaintances there. The hours are 7:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. so it's going to be an early start for me, considering that it is a two hour drive. Please excuse me if I'm a bit bleary eyed if you drop by to see me.

The market is the L-shaped red-roofed building in the middle of this map.

View Larger Map

See you on Saturday!

Carving bowl rims

2008-02-08T12:17:00.001-04:00

One of the most common questions I get asked about my kitchen-safe bowls is how I make the decoration around the rim. Many think I use a machine, and woodworkers sometimes think I use a chatter tool.

Neither are correct. I use a traditional woodcarving gouge, which when properly sharpened will cut nicely through hardwoods like maple and yellow birch. Normally I have the bowl mounted on the lathe with its outside surface facing me. But the three big bowls that I mentioned earlier today were only ever mounted the other way round, meaning that I had to work from behind the lathe. The easiest way I found to do this is to perch myself on top of the lathe. I felt somewhat like a gargoyle up there, but it gets the job done quite comfortably.

Bowling along

2008-02-08T09:11:00.001-04:00

Cyndi left a comment on my last post asking for an update on progress with all those bowls that I am working on. I 'm pleased to say that I have been busy, too busy to blog apparently, and they have now all made it through step two of the process. They have now all had the outside of the bowl turned, sanded and the decoration carved around the rim. Here they are, stacked in boxes in my gallery, the only space I seem to have available at the moment:-

As you can see, there is quite a range of sizes here, from 4" to 17" diameters. So whether you want a bowl to snack on peanuts while you watch tv, or a salad bowl for a big dinner party, I expect to have something soon that will suit your needs.

You have probably noticed that the very small bowls and the two large bowls in the picture above have had their inner surface turned and sanded too, which is the third step in the process. I did all the small bowls one day when I had the lathe set up for another job (a fridge door handle shaped like a rolling pin!) and while the chuck had a small set of jaws installed, I decided to go ahead and turn all the bowls that would need that setup. You see, I like spending my time turning wood, not fiddling with machinery.

The three big bowls had to be dealt with slightly differently in that they were big enough for me to screw them to a faceplate, skipping step one, and doing steps two and three at the same time. Here is the last of the of the big bowls which is on the lathe at the moment, ready for final sanding and carving the rim decoration. It is a whopping 17" diameter and 5" deep, one of the biggest bowls I ever made.

Death row at Seafoam

2008-01-22T07:57:00.000-04:00

This month I have been doing little else but turn bowls. I had accumulated over one hundred roughed out bowl blanks and they were beginning to swamp my storage space, so I thought it would be a good idea to take advantage of this quiet time of year to get them turned into finished bowls.

Unfortunately they didn't all make the grade. A couple had split while drying; possibly I had left them too thick, and they weren't able to warp as they dried, and the stress caused them to split apart. Another was an error on my part and the bottom of the bowl was too thin - so thin in fact that it was translucent. So these three bowls ended up on death row:

It is a shame that these bowls didn't make the grade, and I hate to destroy them, but when you consider the total number of bowls that I am working on, I don't consider it a bad loss rate. Some woodturners might salvage these bowls by filling the cracks with epoxy and decorative materials, but most of my customers are looking for practical bowls that can be washed in the sink and will last a lifetime, so I use robust materials and only permit minor defects in the wood.

That is the pile of bowls which I am working on. They have been roughed out and left to dry, and then go back on the lathe four times before they are finished. In the picture above they have all had the first step completed. I have turned a recess on the inside of each bowl's rim. This will allow me to grip the bowl securely in a chuck so that I can shape the outside of the bowl.

I am working on these bowls step by step, putting all of them through step one before moving on to step two. This makes for more efficient working, since each step requires a different set up of the chuck, and a lot of time can be wasted changing the jaws, so while I have it set for one job, that is all I will do, even if it does take a week or more to get through them.

Winding down at Antigonish

2007-12-18T10:09:00.000-04:00

This coming Saturday, December 22, will be your last chance to come visit me at Antigonish Farmer's Market until it re-opens again next spring. Dress warm though, because even with the space heaters, it is still very cold in the barn. Last Saturday moisture was freezing in the roof space and falling as showers of tiny snow flakes. But even so everyone was very cheerful and busy buying produce and gifts. One lady turned up with a basket of kittens looking for new homes and it wasn't long before they were all adopted. Not a bad way to get rid of kittens, but it would have been better if the mother had been fixed before the accident happened.

I have to say that I have been very pleased with both the way the market is run, and the support shown to me by the people of Antigonish, and I thank you all very much. It is very encouraging, and I will be looking at ways to show my wares at other markets around the province next year. The new market that is planned for Halifax looks very exciting in terms of its "green" construction. I hope that one day I might be able to show my work there. Here is a short video presentation outlining its construction:

Fall Schedule

2007-10-06T18:48:00.000-03:00

Last weekend I started taking a booth at Antigonish Farmer's Market, and so far it has been very successful. Here is a picture of my set-up this weekend. The market is open for only three hours on a Saturday morning, so I built some new displays which are fast to set up and easy to fit in the car.

I have two craft shows coming up.

October 13/14, Hogmanay, in New Glasgow at North Nova Education Centre, which is in support of their music program.

November 17/18, Festive Craft Market, Langille Athletic Centre, Bible Hill, Nova Scotia.

I will be back at Antigonish on 20 and 27 of October, 9am- noon. I hope to be able to join them in November and December, but they haven't decided on a venue and there may not be space. So stay tuned news on that.

At other times I am usually in the studio and welcome visitors, but it is best to contact me before travelling to arrange an appointment in case I am out.

New work

2007-07-19T12:32:00.000-03:00

I have been working on the third set in my Triplets series for several months. They are made from a block of really interesting elm which has some nice figure and huge area of bark inclusion. They turned out really nicely in the end, but the twisted grain of the wood made it a real pain to work with. I had to spend a lot more time than I wanted with a knife cleaning up cuts, texturing some surfaces with carving gouges, and sanding. I called this set The Bothersome Brothers.

But they surprised me by selling within a week of going on the shelf. I hadn't even had a chance to take proper photos of them, but their proud new owner was patient enough to let me take this shot before they left for their new home.

I have also started making pendants:

These particular ones are turned from various burl woods. They are strung on a soft nylon cord which is adjustable in length. They are selling very well and I am exploring other design options and ways of stringing them. I have some clasps and other stringing materials on order and look forward to trying them out. I also ordered some findings to make matching ear rings.

Stay tuned. I hope to be able to offer these from the website very soon.

How important are handcrafted items in your life?

2007-07-12T14:41:00.000-03:00

How important are handcrafted items in your life? This is the question that will be addressed on the Maritime Noon phone-in, tomorrow, Friday, July 13th.

In a world that's awash in mass-produced products, certain individuals still devote themselves to making things that are unique. Artisans around the Maritimes create everyday items like coffee mugs & breadboards, accessories like earrings & shawls, and fanciful objects that blend various media and defy description.

Maritime Noon is the lunch time radio show of CBC serving Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. It can be listened to live from the links on the Maritime Noon homepage, and will be archived for one week from their Phone In page. The phone in starts after the one o'clock news (Atlantic Standard Time).

I will be listening. It will be interesting to learn what my potential customers have to say. If you can't get on the phone-in, why not leave a comment here and tell me what you think about handcrafted items, or what you think of the comments made by the phone-in participants.

update: (Due to special coverage of the Lord Black trial, this show was shortened to about 30 minutes and started at 1:30 or thereabouts)

Summer season

2007-06-18T11:28:00.000-03:00

It's summer now at Seafoam Woodturning Studio, though you wouldn't guess by looking out the window here today. Anyway, the studio at Seafoam is now open on a regular basis, Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and most Fridays by chance or arrangement. At weekends I will be at the Pictou Weekend Craft Market. I hope to see you soon!

If you aren't familiar with the area, SunriseTrail.ca will help you plan your visit, and our Google map will help you find both my studio and the craft market.

One log, thirty three bowls and a pup

2007-04-30T16:40:00.000-03:00

Last Friday I found a nice message waiting for me on the answering machine. A neighbour had cut a yellow birch log for me and hauled it out to the roadside with his horse. All I had to do was go get it, so I fueled up the chainsaw, threw it in the trunk and off I went. It was a nice clear log with no noticeable defects, eight to ten feet long , and between twelve and fifteen inches in diameter. I soon had it cut into three more manageable pieces, then wrestled them onto the back seat of the car. Not the ideal transport arrangement, but the best I can manage right now.

Over the last few days I have been roughing out bowl blanks from that one log. Using the coring device shown below, I was able to to get thirty three bowl blanks from it.

Here are the bowls blanks which will be set aside to dry for several months. They vary in size from about six inches upt to thirteen inches in diameter. The photo also shows a couple of the tools that I used and the pile of wet shavings that came from them. Without the coring tool, I would only have got eighteen bowls and a much larger pile of shavings.

This is also a good opportunity to introduce you to the newest member of the Seafoam Woodturning team, Sasha MacDasha, a three year old toy poodle.

Interviewed for Layers Upon Layers

2007-02-22T10:23:00.000-04:00

Hey folks! My friend Cyndi Lavin, a professional blogger who writes for b5media, has just posted an interview we did recently.

Cyndi asked some searching questions that made me really think about things I take for granted in my day to day work. Do take a look if you want to learn more about the work I do, and check out the rest of Cyndi's blog while you are there. She is a great writer and always has some interesting things to share.

Busy doing nothing?

2007-02-11T18:01:00.000-04:00

At this time of year I tend to spend a lot of time doing preparatory work, but not actually getting anything finished. Lately I have been rough turning salad bowls blanks. Here I am hollowing a medium sized bowl and creating a pile of shavings on the floor.

Here I am working on a larger bowl blank. This picture gives a good idea of the long shavings that come off when turning green wood, that is wood that still has moisture in it. It is softer and more flexible than dried wood, so it is quite easy to make wide cuts and the shavings are less likely to break into small chips.

I did get to spend some time turning some smaller salad bowl blanks that have been taking up shelf space in my drying room. At the moment I seem to be in the enviable position of having nearly too much wood, and need to clear space for it all.

These bowls have since had one application of walnut oil. Tonight I plan on giving them a second coat, then when that is dry in a week or so they will be ready to go out on the gallery shelf. I might put a few for sale here, so do watch this space if you think you could use a kitchen-safe wooden bowl.

Kitchenware care

2007-02-06T11:17:00.000-04:00

Caring for your spurtle or salad bowl is a simple case of washing it in warm soapy water and drying thoroughly. An occasional application of oil or wax may be called for, but for the most part timely washing will keep your wooden kitchenware in good condition.

But if it takes on an odour such as garlic or onion, try rubbing it with a slice of lemon, lime or orange, then sprinkle with salt and wipe with a paper cloth.

In more extreme cases where food has gone off in the bowl, such as fruit which has been forgotten, try making a mixture of mineral oil and pumice powder. Rub this into the bowl with a cloth. Many applications may be needed, but this is probably the safest way for consumers to fix a bowl.

I once had a customer come to me with an old bowl, not one of mine I should add, that had had some fruit go off in it. The bottom was a really sticky mess and I had to remove quite a bit of wood to get back to a reasonably good finish. Sandpaper is not much use in cases like this since it will gum up right away. I used a curved cabinet scraper, but even then it was a tediously slow job.

Carnival of the Creators #15

2006-11-10T08:36:00.000-04:00

I had two blog posts featured in this month's Carnival of the Creators at Mazel Tov! Jewelry Treasures. Cyndi has featured a really interesting selection of blog posts about jewelry for breast-feeding moms, crewel embroidery, writing, corde lisse, photography and of course woodturning.

From this blog, the featured article was the one I wrote about the materials I work with for making salad bowls. The other selection was from my other blog, The ToolRest, which I write with other woodturners in mind. This is not to say that it won't be of interest to customers too, if they want to gain a fuller understanding of the practise of woodturning. In the featured post I take a look at sources of inspiration for woodturners, and how they use it.

I'm pleased to say that the Carnival of the Creators seems to be gaining momentum in it's new monthly format. If you are a blogger who writes about creativity, art, craftsmanship or similar issues, why not submit the best post you write in the next month. It's a great way to gain exposure, new readers and links. You might even want to host a future edition. It really is fun and brings even more benefits upon your blog.

Technorati tags: blog carnivals, Blogging, woodturning, carnival, Carnivals

The stuff that salad bowls are made of

2006-10-22T20:45:00.000-03:00

Big salad bowls are made from big pieces of wood. Acquiring this material is considerably more involved that driving to a wood supplier and throwing a few boards in the back of the car.

Earlier this year I purchased six big logs, a mixture of maples, yellow birch and beech. I hired someone with a tip truck to haul them to the spot in a neighbours woodlot where they were going to be sawn. I'd rather not say too much about getting the truck stuck in the mud and the resulting fun we had getting the logs off. Then we needed a tractor to lift the logs on to the brow, a raised platform that the logs are rolled along and onto the saw mill.

The big day came last Thursday when the bandsaw mill arrived. The whole operation went quite smoothly, and in a few hours I had a trailer loaded up with boards and larger sections from which I can easily cut bowl blanks.

First thing on Friday morning the wood was delivered to my yard. It was quite a good work-out unloading them, as they are still quite sizeable chunks of wood. These are the boards, some nearly two feet wide.

I don't have space indoors to store boards this long, so I have to cut most in half and trim off the ends to remove any cracks. Then the ends are sealed to prevent further splitting.

Finally I have this pile of wood which is destined to make salad bowls, some of which will be much larger than anything I have made to date. From this photograph it is difficult to appreciate the size of these pieces of wood, but it is a real challenge for me to move them on my own.

I will post more pictures as work continues to show the many steps that go into making a big bowl.

technorati tags: salad bowl, wood-mizer, woodturning

Black Ash Weedpot

2006-08-23T11:49:00.000-03:00

Today I am able to offer someone the opportunity to purchase a very unique weedpot. Essentially it is a three-sided pot, each face having its own unique texture. It is made from a most unusual piece of black ash and stands about seven inches tall.

This first picture shows the turned face on the left, and it is here that you can see the beautiful grain of black ash. This piece has several horizontal ripples in the grain to provide extra visual interest. The heartwood is lined with a thin layer of sapwood just underneath the bark.

The second side of this pot is the bark of the tree, a coarse ridged texture that is a complete contrast to the finely finished wood surface.

The final side of the pot comes from an old crack in the tree. I think this may have been made by a lightning strike, but can't be sure. No matter what caused it, the result is a calloused area with vertical lines running down along each growth ring.

This weedpot might be used to display dry grasses, but will make a fine addition to your decor or collection on its own.

SOLD

Triplets II

2006-07-26T10:22:00.000-03:00

Last year I told you all about Triplets I. Since then I have created the second in the series, pictured below. They have both received a lot of favourable feedback, both online and in person.

At first sight, many people are baffled by them, but when I rotate the individual pieces and a new pattern emerges their faces light up and they want to 'play' with the pieces themselves. They love to pick them up and examine them individually, looking at how the turned surfaces meet to create edges with quite bizarre profiles. When placed side by side, these edges often give the impression of the pieces having been wrought asunder by violent means. And when the set is arranged as shown in the picture below, viewing from one angle shows one complete pattern while choosing a viewpoint 90 degrees away shows another pattern. This art is really quite interactive, and I encourage people to re-arrange the pieces and view from whatever angle they choose. Looking down on the tops provides quite a different aspect of this work.

But for all this interest, I was beginning to wonder if they would ever sell. So I was delighted when Triplets II was sold the other day.

The very next day the postcards that I had ordered arrived from the printers. They are based on the picture above and I hope they will prove to be a useful promotional tool.

tecnorati tags:
interactive art, woodturning, sculpture

Summer Craft Market

2006-06-26T15:30:00.000-03:00

The Pictou Weekend Craft Market has opened for the summer, and that is where you will find me every Saturday and Sunday until September 24. It is located on the Pictou waterfront in the curling club, just across from the ship Hector and is open from 10am to 5pm.

This year I have a slightly bigger booth and have set up a workbench where I can spend time between customers doing some carving. At the moment I am working on decorating a small oak bowl. It is a nice way to pass the time between customers. I'm not very good at sitting around with nothing to do.

So if you are in Pictou this summer, drop by and say hi.

My studio at Seafoam is open daily from Monday to Thursday, 10am - 5pm as a minimum. I am usually open well before 10, and sometimes stay open after 5, depending on what other chores and yard work needs doing. Fridays are bit hit and miss. This is the day I might shut up shop altogether if I have to go out, but I hope that won't happen too often and that the studio will be open as much as possible. If you want to call ahead the number is 902 351 3886 or toll free 1 888 428 3794.

Technorati tags: Pictou, Nova Scotia, woodturning, carving

Salad bowl Sunday

2006-03-19T08:46:00.000-04:00

Salad bowls are something I only make when I have access to suitably large pieces of green wood. Unlike some of the bowls you will find in stores, these are made from one solid piece of wood. Hauling and handling the raw material is no easy matter, and not something I am really geared up to do on a regular basis. So I don't always have salad bowls for sale, and when I do they usually sell quickly from my gallery during the summer and fall. So they don't usually make it to the website.

This year I actually have some salad bowls ready early. So, for all my on-line customers I am going to make them available on this blog. It's easier to post them here than on the website. So for the next few weeks watch out for 'Salad bowl Sunday'!

Here is this week's offering:

It is turned from maple and finished with walnut oil, a kitchen-safe oil which is non-toxic and easy to maintain with further applications of oil or beeswax as needed. The rim pattern has been handcarved with a gouge.

The internal dimensions of this bowl are 12.5" diameter by 4.8" deep. Externally it is 13.7" by 5.7".

SOLD

Technorati tags: salad bowl, salad, kitchen, woodturning

Winter woodturning update

2006-03-07T22:15:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was a beautiful day today here in Seafoam. The sun shone all day and the temperature soared to just above freezing. It made me wonder where the winter had gone and what I had been doing all winter.

Apart from making stock for the summer and fall seasons, winter is a time for getting odd jobs done and trying out new ideas. One job was to reorganize the lumber pile that has been sitting in the middle of the workshop since last fall. I extracted all the maple that can be used for inlaid weedpots and bits'n'bobs bowls, and cut it all up into square blocks ready for use. I also rearranged the pile so that the lumber I am most likely to need is at the top of the pile:)

Last month I took a woodcarving course at Carvers in Pictou. There were four of us and we made spirit faces. I choose to use a fairly dry piece of spalted black cherry which added a few extra challenges to the task.

My carving is the third from the left. It still has a few details to work on, but at least it looks like a face. The color or the wood, the spalting and the knots disguise some of the features, but I like it. I think it adds an air of mystery to it, perhaps suggesting that the wood spirit doesn't really want to be seen. Standing behind my carving is Keith Matheson the owner of Carvers and our instructor. I plan on doing more carving this year, so what Keith taught me will be very useful, especially how to sharpen carving tools, a quite different technique to what I use for turning tools.

One of my other experiments this winter has been with woodblock prints. I want to explore the possibilities of creating the blocks on a lathe and using multiple blocks to create abstract prints. Here is one block being turned:

So far I don't have any results worth sharing, but I am intrigued by the process and am confident I will have some prints for sale this summer. I am fascinated by the limitations that a lathe places on the art, but I am equally convinced that I can make some work worth showing.

Yesterday I turned a natural edge bowl out of yellow birch. A nice little piece with some interesting inclusions.

Today I need to finish sanding this bowl and turn the base. Then it will be left to dry for a month or so before it can be oiled and buffed. I have some more green wood in the shop that I want to work on and make a few more green bowls. There are also some big pieces in the yard waiting to be cut up and roughed out for salad bowls.

Carnival of the Creators

2006-02-21T20:39:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the very first edition of the Carnival of the Creators, a weekly round-up of blog posts with a creative theme. Each week the carnival is hosted at a different blog and will feature blog posts by or about people who create things - artists, writers, craftspeople......

Lets start by visiting another blog carnival, Storyblogging Carnival XXXVIII, hosted this week at Tales by Sheya. Storyblogging consists of storytelling in blog format. It may be as simple as posting short stories on a blog, serialising a book, or as intricate as blogging as a fictional persona.

Next, the carnival stops at two jewelry maker's blogs. Cyndi Lavin of Mazel Tov! Jewelry gives instructions for making a freeform neckpiece on a sterling silver armature. Meanwhile, over on Indigoskye Bead Fashions, Wendy Van Camp explains the beauty and benefits of Argentium Sterling Silver.

Luann Udell gets down to business and talks about the artist's fear of having their designs copied. Her answer is to Get Ahead and Stay There.

On an equally business-like theme, Edward Winkleman blogs about the current state of collecting art. He discusses one collector who thinks that collecting is an art in it's own right. Edward believes that collectors need to spend more time getting to know artists, and that they should find new ways to open a dialog with artists. He suggests that starting a blog is one option.

For those who like to dress well, this article about the crafting of bespoke shirts is an interesting read. It is by Thomas Mahon, bespoke Savile Row tailor who writes in his blog, English Cut.

It is always interesting to read about how people find their paths in life. Xanthe has posted an article about her experiences with art as a child. Laughed at by her peers, her teacher had some words of encouragement and now Xanthe declares "I Am an Artist". She now makes books and says she has her own special way of looking at things. Elsewhere, Leslie Shelor tells us how her grandmother's spinning wheel and three rabbits helped her start her business, Greenberry House.

It's always nice to see someone using their art in aid of a good cause, especially an environmental one, so over on Acres Wild I talk about Sarah Harmer's song, Escarpment Blues.

And that is a fitting place to end, because next weeks Carnival of the Creators will be hosted at Acres Wild. If you have written or read a blog post you would like to see included, you can do so with this nomination form. I also desperately need volunteers to host forthcoming editions of the carnival on their blog. It's a great way to get links, new readers and make new friends.

Technorati tags: art, craft, blogs, carnival, Carnival of the Creators, environment, jewelry, Sarah Harmer, bespoke, artist.

All about Derek

2006-02-13T21:24:00.000-04:00

Many of the visitors to my studio or craft-show booth want to know what I did before I started woodturning. Now my blog readers can learn a little about me by taking a look at the lens I made about myself at Squidoo.com:

Squidoo : Derek Andrews, woodturner

Show Time

2005-10-30T20:02:00.000-04:00

My first craft show of the season was two weeks ago in New Glasgow. It was a very good show and I was really pleased with sales. There was a good selection of artists and craftspeople at the show, but very few have websites, the exceptions being Jamie Brown, watercolor artist, and Victor Whitewood who makes some quite unique chainmail jewelry.

Later that week I attended the Pictou County Trade Show organised by PRDC as part of Small Business Week. The theme of my display was 'How can a woodturner help your business?'

I showed products that can be used as gifts for customers, employees and conference speakers, or put in a goody bag for promotional purposes. I also showed some of my one-of-a-kind art which might be displayed in reception areas and board rooms, or given as a corporate gift.

Next weekend I am off to the Agridome in Truro, Nova Scotia, for a show put on by the local Zonta Club. I see from their website that my near neighbours Harold and Valarie Langille of Yardbirds will be there. They make some absolutely wonderful steel and glass scupltures for your lawn, garden or pool. Take a look at their Peacock design.

Finally I would just like to give a mention to another artist/blogger, Hannah Shapero, who has just opened a show of her work in the "Bakery on the Common" coffee-house art gallery in Natick, Massachusetts. The show runs until the end of December.

Technorati tags: woodturning, nova scotia, truro, Natick, craft show.

Craftshow season

2005-10-12T20:15:00.000-03:00

My first craft show of the fall season is this weekend!

Hogmanay Craft Fair
North Nova Education Centre, Park Street, New Glasgow
Saturday Oct 15, 10am-5pm
Sunday Oct 16, 10am-4pm

If you miss this event, you can also catch me in November at these shows:

Zonta Craft, Antiques and Collectables Fair
Nova Scotia Provincial Exhibition Grounds, Truro
Saturday Nov 5, 10am-5pm
Sunday Nov 6, 11am-4pm

Christmas at the deCoste
deCoste Entertainment Centre, Pictou
Saturday Nov 12, 10am-5pm
Sunday Nov 13, 11am-5pm

Festive Craft Market
NS Agricultural College, Truro
Saturday Nov 19, 10am-7pm
Sunday Nov 20, 11:30am-5pm

Tags: craft shows, nova scotia

The beauty of wood

2005-10-09T18:03:00.000-03:00

Today I was rummaging through a stack of papers in my office and came across a scribbled draft that I wrote sometime in the past. I don't recall what I intended to do with it, so I guess this blog is as good a place as any.

It is the structure of wood that makes it such an intriguing material. Each species has its own characteristics of grain and color. Each twist of grain, each knot and each bark inclusion says something of the life of the tree. These features make wood a challenging material to work with, but with care and skill these natural features enhance the crafted form.

Technorati Tags: wood, beauty

Triplets

2005-09-28T16:39:00.000-03:00

I recently completed a new piece of work that I am really quite excited about.

It is a set of three weedpots, turned from the same piece of wood on five different axes. At first glance the faces of the weedpots seem to be decorated with random carving, but when they are properly arranged a single circular design can be seen. When the weedpots are rotated, you will find that there are four such designs to look at.

One of the things I really like about 'Triplets I" is the way the surfaces of each weedpot meet at the corners. It makes for some really interesting shapes.

Click the link to see more pictures and learn about my latest piece of sculptural woodturning.

Technorati Tags: woodturning, art, sculpture

Telephone orders

2005-09-07T12:47:00.000-03:00

Every summer I get calls from people who have visited my studio during their vacation. They either wished they had bought a particular piece of work, or that they had bought more items to take home as gifts.

This yellow birch bowl is just one example of an item that I have mailed this summer:

I got a lovely notecard from it's new owners in Pennsylvania to tell me that it had arrived safely. It was much admired by all their family and is destined to become a family heirloom. Feedback like that is always so nice to receive, especially for unique pieces like this that I am so fond of myself and really wish I didn't have to sell. I find it reassuring to know that it has gone to a good home.

I currently have an order for a small salad bowl. The lady had seen something she liked in my booth at the craft market, but didn't buy it at the time. Whichever bowl it was, I don't have it any longer, but I do have some roughed out blanks that are ready for finishing, so I will be starting that job next week. When they are finished I will send some pictures by e-mail for her to choose from.

While it is often possible for me to fulfill requests like this, very often truly unique pieces cannot be replicated if they are already sold. So if you do visit my studio and see something you like, do remember that it may not be available for very long. A lot of my work never makes it to the website.

But if you do need to purchase something that isn't on the website, you can call me toll-free on 1-888-428-3794, or email me.

Incidentally, the notecard I got from Pennsylvania was of a watercolor called 'Trumpets of Hope' by artist Andy Smith who donated the work to the American Cancer Society.

Technorati Tags: woodturning, bowl

Why I think my work is Worthwhile

2005-09-02T10:52:00.000-03:00

Anita Sharpe writing in the Worthwhile Blog has asked to hear your thoughts on why your work is Worthwhile. Here is my response:

As a woodturner I am helping to keep a traditional craft alive and in the public eye. The ability to be creative is important to me, and in turn it brings a little joy to my customers. I work with a material which is sustainable and which helps to keep the planet alive whilst it is growing.

I believe that small independent businesses are vital to a stable economy. My work is labour intensive, not capital intensive, so less of my income goes to large corporations.

I take pride in being self employed. I do not rely on others to keep me employed. I take pleasure in my successes and responsibility for my failures.

I believe that these things are all worthwhile.

Technorati tags: worthwhile, woodturning, craft, business, environment, economy

Spurtles aren't just for oatmeal

2005-08-27T21:10:00.000-03:00

Joyce, who runs Pictou Weekend Craft Market, bought a spurtle a few weeks ago. This morning she told me that it was an ideal tool for cooking pickles.

This week Joyce has been making a big batch of Sweet Mixed Pickles, with ingredients largely from her own garden. It takes all week to cook, and she says it needs to be stirred and poked every morning. That's where the spurtle comes into use.

Joyce was so pleased with her spurtle that she bought three more for gifts. Be sure to look for her wonderful spurtle-stirred pickles at Pictou Weekend Craft Market.

Technorati Tags: oatmeal, spurtle, cooking, pickles, pictou

It's summer time, OK?

2005-08-19T22:00:00.000-03:00

I know I haven't blogged for a while. It's not because I'm spending all day at the beach rather than working in the shop. Quite the contrary in fact. I have just been too busy to sit down, gather my thoughts and write something meaningful and coherent.

Summer is always a busy time for me, when tourists and cottagers are in the area. This year I have taken a booth at the Pictou Weekend Craft Market, which takes away two days that I would otherwise be busy in the workshop. So I have more sales and less time to make new stock, and it is a struggle to keep the shelves filled. But yesterday I did take a day off.

My R&R actually began on Wednesday evening when I took in a ceilidh at Pictou's deCoste Centre, with music by John Spyder MacDonald, John Ferguson and fiddle player Alycia Putnam and family. Yesterday I drove over to Antigonish County and hiked the Fairmont Ridge Trail with my dog Maggie. It was a great walk, some of the slopes made for a great workout, and I feel much better for having done it.

Earlier in the week I made some inlaid weedpots. They have been selling very well this summer, and I only had two left on the shelf. This batch includes inlays of bubinga, ziracote, black ash, cherry burl, spalted elm and the spalted beech which I cut up back in April.

Today I started work on an order of favors for an October wedding. I got forty turned today, so I can take them with me to the craft market and burn the inscriptions while I am not waiting on customers. Woodburning is one of the few jobs I can do out of the shop.

Guitar pick bowls. A new market?

2005-05-31T09:02:00.000-03:00

I took a phone call yesterday from a gentleman complementing me on a bits and bobs bowl that he had bought. He got it on the weekend at a fundraiser for Read-by-the-Sea, and he was calling to let me know how much he liked it, and to thank me for donating it to the silent auction.

As it turns out, he is a member of the Calgary Woodturners Guild, but his real purpose in buying the bowl is that he plays guitar and he thinks the shape of this bowl will be ideal for keeping guitar picks in.

The ideas people have for using these simple little bowls never ceases to amaze me. Whether there is a big market for guitar pick bowls remains to be seen!

Technorati Tags: guitar, bowl, woodturner

Corks and Corkscrews

2005-05-29T18:03:00.000-03:00

I have being doing some research today about corks and corkscrews. I will soon be adding a new product to my line, a bottle stopper and corkscrew gift set, and needed some information to spruce up my packaging and marketing. I'd like to share with you some of that information and the links I found.

Cork has only been used to seal wine since the 17th century (www.history-of-wine.co.uk). Cork is harvested sustainably from the cork oak, which has it's bark stripped every nine years. This does no long-term harm to the tree, which typically lives for 150-200 years. Much of the world's supply of cork comes from western Mediterranean countries. Corkfacts.com describes the whole process of harvesting and making corks.

Sometimes wine goes off due to contact with cork which has been contaminated with mold and chlorine. This creates a chemical known as TCA and the bottle is said to be 'corked'. This has caused considerable debate about the use of cork, and there are many calls for vineyards to consider switching to alternatives. This has created some concern within environmental organistions such as the RSPB, who warn that a large move away from cork might mean destruction of the cork oak forests and the loss of species such as the Iberian lynx, the Spanish imperial eagle and the Bonelli's eagle.

It is not clear exactly when the the corkscrew was invented, but it is believed to have been based on a tool used to clear musket barrels of unspent charges. The traditional corkscrew is a simple helical wire on a wooden handle. Many patents have been filed since then to make cork extraction more effective, and today there are many collectors of corkscrews. The Virtual Corkscrew Museum has many pages of corkscrew pictures.

And finally a few quotations:

"During one of my treks through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. We were compelled to live on food and water for several days."
Cuthbert J. Twillie (W.C.Fields) in My Little Chickadee (1940)

"Here's to the corkscrew - a useful key to unlock the storehouse of wit, the treasury of laughter, the front door of fellowship, and the gate of pleasant folly."
Anon.

"Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew."
Charles Dickens

Finally, I hope to have these new wine stopper and corkscrew sets ready in the next few weeks, and will get them on the website as soon as I can. I think they are going to be a good seller, making a great gift for wine enthusiasts.

Tags: corkscrew, wine, wine stopper

Curly Shavings

2005-05-21T20:35:00.000-03:00

Apart from the pleasure of making beautiful artefacts, woodturners often delight in the shavings which pour off the cutting edge of their tools. A sharp tool, properly presented to the wood can produce long streams of shavings. This is often associated with turning 'green' wood, but here are some shavings I made while turning bottle stoppers from kiln-dried maple.

These ribbon-like shavings are made by the parting tool as I rough out the cove.

These fine spiral shavings are made by the spindle gouge as I refine the shape of the cove.

These are my favourite! I like to think of them as delicate little bird nests or woven baskets. They come off of the skew chisel as I turn the very top of the bottle stopper.

Technorati Tags: woodturning, gouge, chisel, shavings

Tourist season?

2005-05-13T09:22:00.000-03:00

With freezing temperatures, and flurries in the forecast, it is hard to believe that the tourist season is just around the corner.

But tonight I am off to display my wares at a 'trade show' organized by the Pictou 'accommodations committee'. They have invited other hosts from elsewhere in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island to spend a night or two in Pictou and to be shown what we have to offer visitors to the area.

I have also signed up for the Pictou County Weekend Market, a new venture for me, and one which should put my work in front of a much wider audience. It's going to be hard work keeping enough stock made to run two venues, but I think I can do it. It does mean though that I won't be able to run woodturning courses at weekends this summer.

Technorati Tags: Pictou, woodturning, tourism

Ready for the tourist season!

2005-05-01T21:17:00.000-03:00

Although I haven't blogged here lately, it doesn't mean that I have been idle. That batch of 110 wedding favors has been shipped and the customer wrote me a lovely e-mail telling me how delighted she was. I now have another order for favors, this time a batch of 200. Today I received an enquiry for a rush order of 8 which would be no problem; I already have some in progress that I can divert for this job which I could probably ship within just 4 days. It's nice to be able to help customers like this when I can.

The gallery is now open for the summer season. I finally got around to laying the ceramic floor tiles which I bought three years ago, but never had a chance to get done. Anyway, the gallery looks a lot better now that the ugly cement floor has been covered up. And we had our first customers today - some folks from the west coast who are in the area for a conference. It will be quiet for several weeks yet, and although our peak tourist season is July and August, more and more visitors are choosing to come in the shoulder season.

Summer hours are 10am-5pm, daily. I hope to see some of you this year, which incidentally is my 10th year in this business.

110 Wedding Favors

2005-04-18T08:47:00.000-03:00

Much of my work is very repetitive. My business largely revolves around the sale of affordable, quality products. In order to keep the price down, I have to work quickly and efficiently. One way to do that is to work on large batches of the same item. This saves a lot of set-up time in between tasks, and I find that I work faster once I get into the swing of things. Even on larger items like bowls, I might have half a dozen in the works at one time, doing the same step on each bowl before moving on to the next step.

There are many stages involved in making wine bottle stoppers. In preparing the wood and dowels, I often do hundreds at a time. Once I get to start turning the shape of the stopper, I work in batches of twenty, the number that will fit on a rack. I have just finished an order of 110 personalized wine stoppers:

Some of these are completely finished. Others are ready to have the corks fitted, while others are still waiting to be buffed to the nice soft shine which many of my customers are so impressed by.

These are to be used at my customer's wedding in September. They are made from black cherry, a depature from the maple which is the norm for personalized wine stoppers. The bride-to-be asked for a darker wood, and cherry seemed to fit the bill. I must say they look very nice, and although the personalization doesn't have quite so much contrast, it is still perfectly readable. Black cherry does have more color variability than maple, but I think that this only adds interest to these favors. I hope the customer likes them too!

Tags: woodturning, wine stopper, cherry, wedding favors

Mountain-Ash

2005-04-13T11:48:00.001-03:00

After finishing with that beech log on Saturday, I hauled a log of mountain-ash into the workshop and began cutting that up.

Mountain-ash is a really nice wood for turning, being similar to apple wood in as much as the texture is very fine and it cuts easily. It has cream coloured sap wood and light brown heartwood with small dark flecks which add interest. Like the beech, this log had also been outside for a year or two and had developed some spalting which will add to the character of the finished artefacts.

I have cut it up into small pieces ready to make weedpots, inlays, bottle stoppers and bits'n' bobs bowls. The endgrain of each piece has been treated with endseal, a wax emulsion that slows down the drying of the endgrain to minimize cracking as the wood dries. It will be several months before any of this wood is ready to work with, but for anyone who appreciates things made from unique pieces of wood, the wait will be worth it.

There are two native species of mountain-ash in Nova Scotia; American mountain-ash (Sorbus americana) and Showy mountain-ash (Sorbus decora), a.k.a. northern mountain-ash or dog-berry. They are not easy to differentiate without the leaves and berries, so I cannot be sure which I have.

Local weather lore holds that an abundance of berries indicates a mild winter ahead.

The European mountain-ash, Sorbus aucuparia, has been introduced to North America and escaped into the wild, probably by birds feasting on the berries. This species is known as rowan, probably from the Gaelic ruadhan, the red one, because of it's scarlet berries. It was often planted on Highland crofts since superstition has it that rowan will ward off witches. It was also used in the Highlands, where timber is scarce, for making tool handles, household implements and small pieces of furniture. If it weren't for its unpleasant smell I would probably use it to make spurtles.

Mountain-ash is not a true ash, the only similarity being the compound leaves. The Sorbus genus is a member of the Rosaceae family which includes crab apple, cherry and strawberry among its 1,500 species. Its wood is generally considered to have no commercial importance, but I am only too happy to give it a good home. I look forward to being able to start turning some of this beautiful looking material.

(I am sorry, but I do not have any mountain ash for sale)

tags: woodturning, bowl, rowan, mountain ash, spalting

Spalted Beech

2005-04-09T18:40:00.000-03:00

I spent the morning working on my books, or more accurately a box full of receipts, so for a bit of light entertainment in the afternoon I cut up a log of beech. It had been in the yard for eighteen months or more, and had a developed a nice amount of spalting.

Spalting is a discoloration caused by fungal attack. It is the first stage in decay, and sometimes the wood can become soft or totally rotten. In this case there was one strip of rot running along a wound in the side of the log, but for the most part it was very sound. Beech is a wood that I have always found to spalt very nicely.

This particular piece also has some figuring in the grain, and I think I will end up with some very interesting woodturnings. I have cut this mainly into small pieces for weedpots, and inlays for my inlaid weedpots.

Now I just have to wait for it all to dry before I can start working with it.

Tags: woodturning, beech, spalting

A warped bowl.

2005-04-04T21:00:00.000-03:00

A few weeks ago I was telling you I was working with some green wood. I had finished turning a birch bowl and was leaving it to dry slowly, wrapped up in newsprint.

Today I have removed it from the paper. You can see how much it has distorted. No cracks! I will leave it to dry some more in a normal climate, then put it in the dry room to finish the process.

Tags: woodturning, bowl, birch, woodworking

Another Satisfied Customer

2005-03-29T09:49:00.000-04:00

I often get e-mails from customers telling me how pleased they are with the piece of my work that has just arrived in the mail. But this is the first time it has been done publicly on a blog.

Wayne Hurlbert, who is the author of Blog Business World, got his spurtle just in time for Easter.

Wayne, I am delighted that your Mom is so pleased with her easter gift. But do please encourage her to make good use of it! These spurtles are functional tools, and as attractive as they may be, I don't make them as works of art.

Most of us live today surrounded by mass-produced wares created by machines and anonymous workers. My hope is that the cook using one of my spurtles takes some pleasure from the fact that they are using a tool which was handcrafted by someone they know a little bit about. Just as in days gone by, before the industrial revolution, when many of the artifacts in daily use were made by a local craftsman.

One of the purposes of this blog is to help customers get to know me better, and to learn a little about the craft of woodturning. I hope it will add to their enjoyment of my creations.

Finally dear reader, do take a look at Wayne's Blog Business World. It is always a good read and full of information about the world of blogging, for both bloggers and blog readers alike.

Tags: woodturning, spurtle, cook, craftsman, artifacts

Cover Story

2005-03-17T19:31:00.000-04:00

That's me on the cover of Atlantic Connection, Industry Canada's Atlantic newsletter. The cover story in the premier edition no less!

The story is about how my website got started thanks to the Community Access Program (C@P) . I am delighted to have been part of the River John C@P committee since it's inception, and I am pleased to report that it has gone from strength to strength. Apart from being the catalyst for building a new library in the village, it has created numerous jobs for trainers, researchers and web-designers. Our projects for this year include digitizing local cemetery records, creating a multi-media CD to help promote the village, and pursuing options for bringing broadband internet service to our rural area.

One added bonus for being on the front cover of a Canadian Government publication is that I also get to be on the back cover in French:

Virage payant
Derek Andrews 'Netpreneur' à son studio de bois tourné à River John (Nouvelle-Écosse).

Tags: Canada, River John.

Working with green wood

2005-03-16T15:03:00.000-04:00

This past week I have been working with some 'green' yellow birch. When woodturners use the term 'green' they are referring to wood which has been recently cut and is not yet dry.

In this instance the wood was cut last summer and delivered to me as short logs. The ends had been sealed with a wax emulsion. This slows down the drying process and minimizes cracking. Even so, because it has taken me all this time to get around to doing anything with it, there were some checks in the end of each log. Fortunately they hadn't gone too deep, and there wasn't too much waste.

I have just finished turning what I call a 'green' bowl. It was turned from start to finish while the wood is still damp, and will now be left to dry slowly. By leaving the walls of the bowl thin they will distort as the wood dries, rather than crack. That's the theory anyway, but one can never be too sure. I have now wrapped the bowl up in newsprint, and will leave it to dry slowly for a few weeks before removing the paper. When finished, it will not be perfectly round, but will have gone slightly oval and the rim will not be flat. Neither will the bottom of the bowl, so I will remount it on the lathe and trim the bottom so it will sit properly on your table.

One of the beauties of working with green wood is the lovely long wide shavings that stream effortlessly off of the chisel. This picture shows some ofthe shavings I picked up from the workshop floor today. Once dry, these shavings make great kindling for the wood stove.

Tags: woodturning, green wood, bowl

The ancient craft of chair making

2005-03-13T21:28:00.000-04:00

Woodturning doesn't seem to get blogged very often, so I was delighted to see this article by Christopher Proudlove in
WriteAntiques: The best seats in the house.

Whilst the bodgers of High Wycombe are well known in today's turning circles, I wasn't aware that this general method of chair construction has it's roots in the craft of wheelwrighting. Thank you Christopher for this fine article.

Tags: bodger, woodturning, chair making

Creators Outlet

2005-03-09T12:17:00.000-04:00

I have just opened a new store at Creators Outlet.

Normally I don't think too much of third party art gallerys, but Creators Outlet offers an affordable deal which I felt was worth giving a try. The site has a nice clean look, and features many other talented artists and designer-craftspeople, so if you have a moment why not take a look right now?

Making inlays for weedpots

2005-02-27T18:46:00.000-04:00

This past week I have been making inlaid weedpots. The photograph below shows some of the inlays in various stages of production.

This batch of inlays are made of oak burl and black cherry burl.

The roughly cut round slices (right) are glued to circular blocks of wood (top right). These blocks are held in a chuck mounted on the lathe during the turning operation. The finished inlays (left) are carefully pried off of the glue blocks and are ready to be glued into the finished weedpot.

These weedpots are much admired by visitors to the studio. They are quite time consuming to make, so I like to build up a good stock before the busy summer tourist season.

Waste not, want not

2004-12-25T13:06:00.000-04:00

As the title of this blog suggests, I make a lot of chips in my workshop, but they are all just by-products. That is not to say they go to waste. We have all sorts of uses for them. Some are used as cat litter, probably not the ideal material, but they cost nothing and seem to be acceptable to the cats, and the output from the litter tray is compostable. In summer, much of my woodchip output goes on the compost heap anyway, and when mixed with grass cuttings and other organic waste they break down reasonably well. Another outdoor use is on some of the paths out back, but they rot away too quickly to be anything but a temporary solution to muddy patches. During winter I burn quite a lot of woodchips in the workshop woodstove. They don't burn that well since they compact, but if they are thrown into the back of the stove and a few sticks put on top, they burn away slowly, which is all I need once I have got my well-insulated workshop up to a comfortable temperature. Finally, I save the nice curly shavings that come from bowl turning for use in firelighting. They have lots of air space around them and need little encouragement to start a roaring fire.

By-products, however useful, are not desirable. I try to use as much of my wood supply as I possibly can for finished items. It doesn't take a very large piece of wood to make a bottle stopper, a spurtle or an inlay for a weedpot. All the chunks which are of no use are stored in feed sacks and saved for the woodstove in winter.

Recycled Packaging

2004-09-17T14:11:00.000-03:00

I make use of a lot of recycled packaging for shipping customer orders. I save all incoming packaging and collect more from friends and my wife's workplace.

While small items can be shipped in padded envelopes, which I have to purchase, larger items and big orders are shipped in corrugated cardboard boxes. When I get these, I calculate the cubic capacity of the box and write that on the side, then break the box down so that it can be stored flat. Then when I have an order to pack I find a suitable sized box and re-assemble it. I also use flat pieces of cardboard to reinforce the tops and bottoms of some boxes.

The packing material that I use comes in many forms. Polystyrene pellets are quite common, though they are not the most environmentally sound product because they cannot be recycled. I also use larger pieces of expanded polystyrene, the sort of stuff that electronic equipment is often packed in. I cut it down into more manageable sizes with the bandsaw, then use it to fill larger voids in your parcels. Bubblewrap is an old favourite which I normally save for wrapping more delicate items. More recently I have started to see inflatable packaging being used. This comes in the form of polythene bags full of air, which seem to be a very environment friendly solution since there is very little material used to achieve a very large amount of padding. If they aren't going to be reused they can be deflated and recycled along with any other LDPE .

One strange material I got recently was corrugated cardboard which had be cut into v-shaped pieces. It made for a quite heavy packaging, but since most Canada Post parcels have a minimum density applied to them (low density parcels are paid for by volume, not weight) , this is probably not a big problem to me.

So why do I go to all the trouble of storing and re-using recycled packaging? Well, it saves cash for one thing. For the quantities of packaging that I use, it can be expensive. But I would much rather re-use something than throw it away. I like to do my bit for the environment, and if I can use something one more time before it goes to the landfill or recycling facility then so much the better. So as long as it is clean and reasonably presentable, then I will happily re-use it.

Creating Creativity

2004-08-16T18:41:00.000-03:00

I spend a lot of time doing what I would call production work. I have well established designs, I know how to make them, and I do nothing else all day, sometimes even day after day, or week after week. It is what pays the bills.

The problem I find is that it dulls my creativity. The mind goes numb and it becomes very difficult to create something new when I have to.

A few days ago when I dropped by Carvers Coffee House & Studio and they asked if I would like to join in an open house they are having this coming weekend. Initially I wasn't too thrilled at the prospect since I don't have a portable lathe I can take to do demo's. But then I thought what if I take some turnings and do some carving on them. Well, why not? That little spark was enough to get me thinking about things I can take too carve.

So far I have come up with some chunky and rather badly turned vase forms which will make unusual garden ornaments. This idea came from Richard Raffan's 'Turning Projects', but I am adding some burnt areas to the vases and then carving designs through the charred areas. Another idea I have is for some 'things to hang on walls'. Simple little turned wall hangings with space for texturing by carving. Finally I hope to do turn some Bits'n'bobs bowls in butternet and do some relief carving on the rims.

So this chance conversation has set me off in new directions and got me out of a non-creative rut. I don't know what will result from it, but it is nice to be able to take some time off from the production mindset and play with new ideas.

Winter woodturning

2004-04-27T21:09:00.000-03:00

I can't believe that four months have passed since I last wrote in this blog. Winter is pretty much over, though it was a cold one, and we had one abnormal winter storm that closed the whole province for several days.

I have been quite busy keeping up with orders and trying to get the shelves filled in the gallery ready for the summer. My new website is up and running, and I have dealt with most of the things I need to get done associated with the change of business name. There are still road signs to repaint, which is not a job I look forward to, but it is much cheaper than having them done commercially.

The last few days I have been turning weedpots, and have some interesting ones with neat features such as natural faces, bark inclusions, splits and knots. I really enjoy working with this more interesting material and working with the wood to incorporate the natural features into the design. I like to turn inset beads into some of the disrupted areas to see how the beads interact with the natural features.

Website promotion

2004-01-22T10:00:00.000-04:00

My new website www.seafoamwoodturning.com is now up and running. But creating a website is just the start. To get lots of visitors it has to be promoted. Search engines are a great way of bringing free traffic to a site, but first you have to get the search engines to notice the site. Here is an article I wrote about using link exchanges to help a website's search ranking:

When search engines began using link popularity as the measure of worth of a web page, a race began amongst webmasters toexchange links with the maximum number of other websites. Many people have joined in this race, but most have blinkers on.

The first opportunity that many people miss is the power of the anchor-text which points attheir site. If a site links to yours using one of your keywords as anchor-text, that will boost your ranking for that keyword.

But the typical format of a link exchange has the company name used as the hypertext link, followed by a keyword-rich description of what the site has to offer. That seldom does a very good job of promoting the site's keywords, since business names are not often keyword oriented. The links would be so much more effective if they were made from the keywords in the description. So my first suggestion is to write link pages in a more natural style, not tying oneself to preconceived notions of what a links page should look like. This makes it much easier to incorporate keywords from the target page into the text. You can see a couple of different styles in Keep warm in winter and Oatmeal & Porridge. An additional benefit of writing very tightly themed pages like this is that they become a useful resource that others might like to link to.

One point to note in those sample pages, is that many of the links point deep within a site, straight to the page which should be best optimized for the keyword(s) in the anchor text. Notice also how the hyperlinks serve to highlight the subject of the paragraph, and tell the reader exactly what they will find if they follow the link. This style is very much like a blog. It is worth noting that by writing your own text around the links, rather than copying a suggestion from the target website, you are creating original content that search engines won't find on other sites

The second opportunity that is missed by many link exchanges is to make more than one link. In the examples quoted above, I link to several pages on one website from within the same paragraph. Another possibility for anyone with a links directory, is to include links from several directory categories. My own site caters to many niche markets, and could easily fit into wedding, gardening, cooking, woodturning and home decor categories. You can see how I have listed Sherry Gaffney's products in Home Decor, Garden Decor and Wedding Supplies. So Sherry is benefiting two fold from these links; once from getting three links, and therefore more PageRank, and again from the extra relevance scores her pages receive for the keywords I use in the anchor-text.

There are a couple of minor problems associated with making deep links. Frames based sites are one, the other is the possibility that deep pages get deleted or renamed. Otherwise there are no snags, only benefits in implementing these techniques.

Lumber update

2003-12-09T14:27:00.001-04:00

Three weeks ago when I last wrote, I mentioned that it was warm enough to work outside in a T-shirt. That has all changed now. We have had some real cold weather since then, and a nasty storm last weekend which saw heavy, wet snow blowing horizontally. The wind was strong enough to wreck the raincap of the workshop flue pipe, so I spent a couple of hours yesterday getting that fixed.

The green wood that I was working on is now all stickered in the storage area. It is between the dust extractor and the shop, so returning air is passing over the wood. I am also cracking open the adjacent window so that the woodstove will suck fresh air in too, to help speed the drying process. My moisture meter only gives readings below 20% moisture content but yesterday I found one piece that was just beginning to give a reading. It seems to be drying quicker than I would have anticipated. Before then I was getting an idea of the moisture loss from a block of wood balanced on an old kitchen scale. It has dropped from 4lb 8oz to 4lb.

As well as the sawn lumber, I also bought a lot of the slab wood. This all had to be cut up into smaller pieces, or rough turned on the lathe to make bowl blanks. That all took some time, but it is done now and I can look forward to having plenty of relatively cheap material to work with next year. There are still two large pieces out in the yard ready to be cut up and roughed out into salad bowl blanks. I hope to get that done soon before it starts to split.

The business of woodturning

2003-11-20T20:28:00.000-04:00

There is more to being a woodturner than working at the lathe turning out beautiful hollow vessels. Today was quite atypical of my working day and actually seems worth writing about!

I was on the road at 7am in someone's truck, on the way to fetch that lumber I had cut on Monday. Apart from heavy rain on the journey out, everything went well. The logging truck that was blocking the forest road had just finished loading so we didn't have to wait long. My lumber was still there too! Having lived in high crime areas in the past, rural Nova Scotia takes some getting used to. The loading was heavy work, but it didn't take too long. Then back to the foresters house where he has a big pile of burls for me to pick through.

We were back to my shop within four hours and the rain had stopped. Unloading was a breeze with a dump truck! But the wood was quite dirty, having been sawn in the woods, and was covered in sticky wet sawdust. So I decided to hose it all down to clean it up. The oak was already staining from contact with the steel saw blade, and maple develops blue stain if it stays damp for too long, so I think that cleaning it up is a wise move since the surface will dry so much quicker. It was a lovely warm day, 18'C, and a strong wind was drying the surface of the wood quite quickly. We don't get many T-shirt days in November, so it was nice to be working outside.

That green lumber was heavy though, so I was glad to take a break from my labours. At 2pm I had to go and meet a business advisor from Pictou Regional Development Commission. I am thinking about changing the name of my business, and I wanted to talk it through with someone to see if its a totally crazy scheme or not. It was a very useful exercise, and she is going to do some research on my behalf. We met at my local library which has office space available, a very useful facility that several organisations use as satellite office.

After that I returned home to find the wood quite dry, so I carried it all into the workshop and stickered it. I still have to trim the ends of the boards and endseal them to prevent them from cracking. Then they will be stickered in the storage area until they are air dried (<18% EMC), at which point they can go into the kiln or dry room, but that is months away yet.

Then it was time for a quick walk with the dogs. They had missed their morning walk since it was dark when I left home this morning. But we only had time for a short walk before I headed back to the libray again. This time it was to meet delegates from the C@P Summit which is taking place in Pictou. Although not strictly a business meeting, I had supplied the conference with bottle stoppers for the delegates goody bags, so I wanted to help out in return.

Tomorrow I still have a bunch of smaller pieces of wood to sort through and process, but I think the really hard work is done.

Busy, busy, busy

2003-11-18T14:52:00.000-04:00

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since I last blogged! But it has been craftshow season. That and a short notice order for personalised bottle stoppers has kept me pretty busy. But that is all behind me now. My last show was last weekend, and I delivered the bottle stoppers yesterday morning. The rest of the day was spent in the woods getting some hardwood lumber sawn to my specifications. It was a glorious day considering it is the middle of November.

The fellow who owned the logs had a friend with a portable bandsaw mill come and cut the wood. Those machines are pretty neat. Most of the log handling is done by hydraulics, turning the log to the required orientation and clamping it in place while the bandsaw makes a one-eighth cut along its length. By mid afternoon I had several hundred board feet of maple, oak, white ash and black cherry stacked ready for collection. I have someone with a truck lined up to go collect it with me on Thursday. I just hope its still there!

Today I have been tidying up the shop, moving things around to make space for all this green lumber. My usual drying procedure involves air drying in the shop, then out to the solar kiln, then back into the dry room to get it down to its final 8% moisture content. Its quite a bit of handling, and could probably be made more efficient. Maybe oneday. In the meantime it keeps me fit.

World Rainforest Week

2003-10-23T20:41:00.000-03:00

Continuing my search for information I have found a few websites worthy of note.

Eco-portal.com has a whole section on forests and forest destruction. Not only does this site have a good directory of relevant websites, but also a sidebar full of links to current news items.

The Rainforest Action Network website is a valuable source of information. And did you know that this is World Rainforest Week? This year they are focussing on Indonesia and encouraging a young persons letter writing campaign against Georgia Pacific.

Working with exotic woods - a dilemma

2003-10-21T14:58:00.000-03:00

Most of the wood used in my shop was grown in Nova Scotia, and some from elsewhere in North America. A very small percentage though are exotic species, mainly from South/Central America and Africa. It is this last category that causes me some misgivings. Whilst it is very pretty wood, and very popular with customers, I do wonder what impact my use of this wood is having on the forests where it grows.

Some say that properly harvested woods help save the forest because it makes the local people see the value of the wood and leads to sustainable management practices. Surely this is better than burning the forests to make way for agriculture, which the local soil can only sustain for a few years. Also I have read in the past that large quantities of these timbers are used for low-grade applications such as construction (often for shuttering which is later discarded) and pallets, so does my contibution metter? Getting a balanced picture of the situation is not easy, but I think it is reasonable to conclude that rainforests are becoming seriously depleted.

Over the next few days I plan to investigate some of these issues, but in the meantime you can help save the rainforest by visiting The Rainforest Site and clicking the Save Our Rainforests button. Sign up for their daily email reminder service by following the Remember to Click link.

Why is this bowl so expensive?

2003-10-18T19:37:00.000-03:00

That question was asked of me today about a very nice bowl that I took to the craftshow. One of the biggest hurdles many craftspeople face in their marketing is educating the public about the value of their work.

I must say straight away that this piece was turned from a very unique piece of wood, in that the branch had made a complete U-turn as it grew. This has resulted in some interesting figure and a bark inclusion right into the center of the bowl. This was one of those pieces of wood that are difficult to mount on the lathe, and not without risk once it starts spinning due the 'defects' hidden within.

The natural edge around the rim of the bowl not only adds to the interest of the piece, but also requires considerable skill to turn. As the wood spins on the lathe, the handheld tool is alternately cutting wood then air, making it want to bounce around. Much skill is needed to overcome this and ensure that the tool doesn't jam in the wood. This is most definitely workmanship of risk, and a moments inattention can lead to the work being totally ruined, or worse.

Then there was the skill that went into identifying the unique features of the piece of wood, designing a form to suit these features and then working skillfully to overcome the challenges that woods of character often present. This bowl is most definitely a one-of-a-kind piece of art that took a lot of skill to make. In my opinion it is worth every penny I am asking for it. Until the day that a customer agrees with my opinion, I am quite happy to keep this piece in my studio to admire myself and as a talking point for visitors. It certainly drew many admiring comments today.

A windfall

2003-10-17T13:54:00.000-03:00

Hurricane Juan left a trail of detruction in its wake as it passed over Nova Scotia. One casualty was the arboretum at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College.

A friend of mine who used to work there was kind enough to salvage some Honey Locust for me. The lumber looks quite interesting, and I am looking forward to being able to turn it. According to my Textbook of Wood Technology, "it has many desirable qualities such as attractive figure and color, strength, and hardness but is little used because of its scarcity". One of its traditioanl uses was for wagon wheels.

testing email delivery

2003-10-17T09:24:00.000-03:00

This post is just to test an e-mail delivery feed via YahooGroups.

Hopefully readers will be able to get this blog delivered by email by signing up at groups.yahoo.com/group/thechipshop/.

Salt and vinegar?

2003-10-15T21:02:00.000-03:00

The chips have been flying in the shop today as I try to turn dibbers. I say 'try' because the power has been a bit iffy due to the high winds. Its not easy when the lathe keeps stopping and starting. I guess I should get some practise on a pole lathe.