Pegs, Pulls and Practice

Been making some bonsai display tables and haven't turned anything in a while. But part of the project required turning a pair of small rosewood "feet"to fix a screw up -make that an "oversight" - aka a Thinko (the mental equivalent of a Typo).

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It's amazing how quickly the eye/hand coordination / muscle memory drops of if not used regularly. So I cut up some scraps - maple, mahogany, padouk and some mystery wood and turned a small boatload of pegs and pulls. Didn't take long before the rusty muscle memory came back for the skew. With a slight curve it's one handy tool.

From now on I'm going to keep a chunk of wood chucked up and ready to play with - while the glue or finish dries on a project. Always handy to have a few pegs and pulls around - there's always stuff that needs to be hung up or something that needs a pull or knob.

charlie b

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charlie b
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Reply to
Canchippy

Thanks. Oddly enough, most Americans think of the "clouds" in the bottom of the apron as something Greene & Greene or Stickley invented. As Steve Jobs of Apple said - "If you're going to steal ideas, steal from the best." (see PARC where GUI - Graphical User Interface and The Mouse were invented). G&G and Stickley got the "clouds" from Chinese furniture designers/makers who'd been doing them for three or four hundred years before they were born. Lots to learn from Chinese furniture - though you have to dig a lot to find out what the joinery you never see in the finished piece looks like - and some of their joinery is extremely complex.

Not sure why, given a millenium or so of woodworking, but I don't recall seeing any Chinese furniture components that look like they were turned. In fact, I'm not aware of any pieces that have round parts at all - the preference seems to be towards oval cross sections - perhaps in keeping with one of the periods that went for minimalism while maintaining the required structural strength of the piece. They play with a lot of illusions of delicacy and lightness. But if you look inside or under what appears to be something delicate you find a lot more beef in places you can't normally see.

Anyone have any links to any turned Chinese wood pieces?

charlie b

Reply to
charlie b

Hi Charlie,

Not long ago I shared with a different group some pictures of chinese woodworking tools that my friend took while visiting there, I was also surprised that no lathe was shown, although china had the lathe a long time ago (and it is in wide use in the rest of asia as well).

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One person on the group said the following
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This doesn't shed any light on the issue, but it affirms what you just said...

Reply to
Moshe Eshel

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