My Project

Hi Everyone and Happy St. Patricks Day to you all,

Well, in honor of St. Patrick and the bowl turners of Ireland, past and present, here is a project update:

The nut bowl is finished and here it is with a coat of Danish oil:



Next is a photo of the small bowl out of monkey puzzle wood from several weeks ago:

This wood has proven difficult to finish--you can see the scratching on the inside of the bowl. It will need more sanding before its done.

Last is a hickory bowl from quite a while back. If you remember I turned this bowl very late last year and as it was unseasoned wood, I sit it aside to dry. Well it cracked and distorted and basically I wrote it off as a failure and tossed it aside and forgot about it.

Well, it magically straightened itself out--the cracks disappeared and the bowl flattened itself out and I have absolutely no idea how that happened. I picked it up this morning and decided to finish turning it and here it is. Its perfectly round with no evidence of cracking:

Have you ever finished a piece and thought ... hey that doesnt look right ...

Well last night we finished painting the sofa table and installed the hardware and I had that feeling, the paint was a little dull and the hardware wasnt quite right


I just couldnt stop staring at the drawer pulls ... so I decided to find something that would be less distracting

With no luck of finding a simple ring pull in a local store I decided to make my own from materials gathered at Ace Hardware


My DIY version has a 1" brass ring, brass cotter pin, brass washer, and another washer for the inside (we will put the washer on the inside and bend the ends of the cotter pin to hold in place).

I am waiting on the wood filler to dry in the holes that we drilled for the pull - then I will give the whole table a final coat of a tinted version of Annie Sloan Versailles (to make it a little less dull)

Hopefully second time will be the charm ... finished photos soon!

The compass prototype needed an improvement on its original non-slip tip, which was the eraser end of a "My First Ticonderoga" pencil. After a little digging at the local hardware store I came out with some rubber stoppers that I thought might work.

To fit the compass, the stopper had to be screwed to a short section of 3/8" dowel. I drilled a countersink just larger than the screw head, and then a smaller hole just larger than the shank all the way through the stopper. In the dowel, I drilled a pilot hole a little smaller than the shank.

I was worried the screw might split the dowel, but I guess I got the sizes right, as everything worked just like it should. Heres a picture of the final product.



You can also see the plowed guide channel for the wedge that tightens the chalk side of the compass. The dowel with the rubber tip is just a friction fit.

I tried it out last week and it works much better. It will still slip if there is a lot of chalk on the board. Or if my technique is sloppy...

update 6/3/09

Ready for the roof boards ....planed and cut to length today

I did lower the pitch a bit so I could use 10 rafters
Update post 5/25

5/25/09 Well It started out innocently enough. It was just going to be a simple shed like the woodshed above I built back in 1975.... (Note the fine mustache and actual hand hewn by Dan and his Brother-in-law, Paul, beams ) ... Then it morphed, as buildings can do, and it will henceforth now be known as The Temple of Wood .... Click the photos to enlarge them ...

New sketch

Inspiration photo ... Im gonna skip the reflecting pool ...