The "seed" for a turning

A Seed.

Banksia Pod.

The Horror, The horror!

So obvious that that idea is easily overlooked.

Anyone else want to play the game?

Palm Nuts

OK - I think we're getting just a little too literal. (Is a tagua nut also a seed?)

What I'm hoping for is for folks to describe the process of going from the initial idea for a piece and the avenues explored before deciding on the piece that finally gets turned. Where'd the initial idea come from and how long before playing around with it and eventually getting a turned piece out of the process.

:o)

IIRC, tagua is but one of the species.

I'm not sure I could do that. The idea comes from inspiration, often a work of art, or a need. Then I begin at the beginning and go on until the end.

Perhaps I asked too open a question. Let's take the last piece you turned specifically.

Let's start with the inspiration (the seed of an idea for a turning).

Does the work of art have to be three dimensional - sculpture - or can it be a painting or photo of an actual thing?

Do you find a line or series of lines or curves that could be a profile for a piece and go from there

- or - get a feeling for a piece (the inspiring piece of art is calm and serene or full of motion and a bit frenetic? Goya might inspire a tall narrow piece whereas Ruben might inspire a round, voluptuous piece.

If a need requires a piece to fill it

Do you do some sketches, maybe at about full scale and work out the basics - for a spoon say - "The handle needs to be at least this long, but not much longer than this, and the "bowl" part should be oval, or maybe almost round - and about this deep." - and then fill in the details after selecting an appropriate blank - and fill in the details as the piece is turned

- or - mount a chunk of wood and keep turning 'til you've got what you need, maybe the size of the blank dictating the possible turned piece.

Do you have the idea of the piece pretty well firmed up

- hard distinct lines demarking the elements of the piece (say distinct beads, coves, rims) and cut layout lines on the blank - or - blended curves, one flowing into another uninterrupted - and layout the transition points?

"I begin at the beginning and go on until the end."

But along the way, consciously or unconsciously, you're making design decisions - and those decisions have an underlying reason for making them. And among those decision, a few are probably critical to the outcome

- the look and maybe the feel of the finished piece.

So - with the last piece you turned, can you, upon reflection, identify some of those critical decisions, or where you might have made a better choice?

Nope.

Well it isn't a turning, but since I know you like to talk about this stuff over in the other forum and there's a lot of folks who read both, I'll talk about the jewelry box I'm working on now.

I started out wanting to have a feeling of lift. I had though maybe doing a series inspired by the elements, and this would be "air". I had sort of a picture in my mind that was totally unbuildable, and from there I started just playing around with how to turn it into something that could actually be made. I also had some curved door parts for other jewelry boxes that haven't been selling too well. I picked up two of them and put them together to make a big curved V.

*ding* I cut one of the doors in half and put them together, it would have been too deep for the proportions if I had used two as they were, and I didn't want to cut two of them down.

I added a piece in between the two that would stick out the bottom with curves at the front and back, in that I put a couple dados on the bottom to receive a pair of arched feet. The feet I decided to do in rosewood, I don't know why, probably just because those boards had been sitting in the rack a long time and I wanted to use some. The width of the feet was determined by the width of the rosewood, and I just worked out the height and curves from there. Made a test piece in ply first which looked okay. And then I realized that the curve I put on the front and back of the part sticking down was going the wrong way, so I had to cut that again by hand with it already glued in between the two curved pieces. I didn't know it was wrong until I saw it all together.

Then I needed to make a top, and I wanted it curved too, so it would be lifting up. I have no steam bending ability, so it was either going to be built up from thin stock and bent that way, or built up of glued up boards with the edges angled and then made into a smooth curve. The problem with the latter was while it's easy enough to hand plane the convex side, I didn't have a good way to do the concave side. On the doors I just leave the inside alone, but that wasn't an option here as you're seeing it on edge. But I do have a spindle sander and edge sander, so it was within the capacity of those I could do it. But the top needed to be wider than that. So I decided to do it in two halves. And with two halves I could have two different curves, and then it would look like I meant to have it in two halves all along. But they had to be different enough to look like it was on purpose, but not so different they looked like they didn't belong with each other.

I also had to choose a species for the top. I thought about the rosewood, but I decided trying to do with something that hard was not going to be fun, and I didn't know how this was going to look until it was made and didn't want to waste it. I needed a lot of small pieces, and I looked at my overflowing scrap bins. If I used scraps I wasn't going to get a good grain and color match between the pieces, which was important. Or was it? What if I made it out of totally random pieces of different species and just celebrate the fact that it's glued up of many pieces rather than try to hide it? Worst case is I get rid of a bunch of scraps, why not. So I cut a bunch of scraps to random widths, random angles, random species. I could assemble them on the bench but there was no way I could hold it all together in place to see what it all would look like until it was glued up. Put it all together and waited for the glue to dry. I ended up cutting one of them in two and putting it back together with a more shallow angle there. Then I attacked them both with the edge sander until I was satisfied with the curves on both sides.

Then I had to match the top of the curved sides to the curve on the bottom of the tops, which took more effort than I expected, mainly because it was difficult to hold it in place. I got that pretty close to my satisfaction, when it dawned on me I had to actually fasten the top to the sides somehow. Oops. I was too concerned about how it was all going to look together that I didn't put much thought into how it was actually going to go together. At this point let's just say I had a failure of imagination, and at the end of Plans A, B and C I had turned the top of the sides into swiss cheese. Also at this point in removing the arched feet which were a little too tight of a fit for the dados I managed to break off the weak narrow side at the front edge on that in between piece I had spent so much time cutting twice already. I was about ready to switch to the sledgehammer at this point, but I just walked away.

So the next day I cut off the part sticking out the bottom, which was both broken and preventing me from being able to cut off the top part of the sides at the TS, which I did also. Made up new pieces to redo the top of the curve, and this time I put pocket screw holes on the inside to fasten the top and glued those back on. I now have the curve smoothed out again on the outside, and that's where I am at. I don't know if plan D for the top is going to work, the screws are going into the top at a shallow angle and it's going to want to push the whole thing apart (that was part of some of the earlier failures) so I am going to get the back on first to fix the sides from spreading, then I should be able to at least get the screws at the front in, then I can take the back off to finish it.

I don't know how it's all going to turn out, but I haven't had a project go this horribly wrong in a while, so I must be on to something. The good ones always put up a fight.

-Kevin

For me, my seed ideas come from Mother Nature, but I like to start from a seedling instead of a seed. I know that's a dumb, smartass answer, Charlie. but I'm no good at "art or sophisticated design speak". Trouble is, that 'Mother' never makes anything perfectly round or symmetrical enough for me to steal her seed. Do mothers actually have seed? Anyway, I'm too lazy to turn off center or off axis. For a while, I did try to seed an idea for a possible unique piece with hopes that it might grow into my signature piece. It didn't and my journey toward failure was short lived although I had fun and learned a lot along the way. Sometimes I wish that I had perservered if only to be perverse.

What was my seed idea? It was to leave the small branches of Norfolk Island pine sticking out about an inch around the circumference of the surface of a bowl or hollow form. I thought to bevel the tips at various angles. Apparently the art was for my eyes only, but hope springs eternal and I've got a lot of prickly experimental bowls that local art experts count tacky. My art waits patiently hidden somewhere in my shop for that happy day of "if and when". :)

Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter

Any of those, but I prefer Nature. I like off center turning, for example, but it's a pain to set up properly. One day I was looking at a branch - oval - when I realized that if I turned a bit of air, I'd have an oval turning without all the messing about.

Sometimes the "seed" is a complete screwup. Like the time I was turning what was supposed to be a shallow plate and I managed to turn clean through the bottom - it was chucked at the time. I was going to consign it to the firewood box, but noticed that the grain seemed to spiral into the hole. So, I turned both sides and now had a toroid with very nice grain spiraling into the hole. Next I cleaned up the center with the drum sander, then cut a flat on the table saw and Hey Presto - ART.

Depends on the particular painting.

My sketching is worse than my turning. Much worse. So I turn until I get what I need.

And in my case those decisions mostly boil down to "It seemed like a good idea at the time." See "ART" above.

On Sun, 11 Jan 2009 14:10:56 -0600, charlieb wrote (in message ):

I'm a hobby level turner and woodworker. Cost sontrol, my own skill set, and my tool set are all controls for me. I'm always willing to experiment and stretch a bit, and that can be a problem. My dedication to practicing new skills is not what it should be, so I can do lots of things, but am not masterful at all of them.

That said, I am currently working with a modest stash of wood samples from a shop my dad had, over fifty years ago. He sold wood. Some of it pretty nice stuff, and he had samples and bits left when his shop closed. Some of these pieces are square sectin blocks, maybe 2 to 4 inches across and anywhere from

6 inches to 2 feet long. Some of it is flat stuff up to 2 inches thick and maybe a foot square. It is all dry - been in an attic since his shop closed, over 50 years ago. Some of the wood is labeled, and some is not. Sometimes the country of origin is on the label, too. Some of the wood might be rare, and some of the countries do not exist by the old name any more.

I select a piece of wood, and wonder what is in it. I find out if SWMBO has any particular wants or needs. Box, spindle, platter, or bowl are the likely outcomes. It has to be something that will get handled and used, though. If I try something, and the wood says, "No, you're not gonna do that." I will listen, stop, think, and then try again, a little bit differently.

I've been studying a chunk of black mangrove, about 2 inches square and about

6 or 7 inches long, and not yet sure what I'll do with it. Maybe a couple of little lidded boxes or small vessels of some kind.

tom koehler

Kevin:

I've been trying to visualize the piece you described. Any chances of posting some pics to alt.binaries.pictures.woodworking - or e-mail them to me? If you e-mail them to me, I'll see about putting them up on my site and post the url here.

charlie b

Don't have binaries access, but here you go:

The pocket hole approach failed miserably as well :) But it was basically free to try that, so it was worth a shot. I ended up putting rails across the top scribed to the bottom of the tops. It's cross grain, but the screws (which were a PITA to get in) aren't that far apart and the holes are oversized, so I dunno what it's going to do when it expands but I don't expect a failure. Now I just have to work out the drawers, which has its own challenges.

Well I could "see" the sides from your description but I was still thinking in terms of the rest being turned elements or parts of turned pieces. NOW it all makes more sense. Very interesting use of the "seed" of an idea - the curved door parts you started with - and the subsequent use of arcs.

Re: the drawers - and their guides Nothing saws the guides have to be in the carcase and fit in grooves in the drawers. Why not reverse that - putting the guides on the sides of the draweres, and grooves in the carcase. And, if the guides extend out in front of the drawer faces - they can act as drawer pulls as well as decorative elements AND let you open the drawers from either side of the box.

Here's the idea

back up a page for the details. While routing the grooves on a curved surface might be tricky perhaps some careful sawing and some chiseling might do the job.

Having looked at some of your prior pieces - and noting your celebrating unusual ways of putting things together and enjoyment of non-flat surfaces - I' sure you'll figure out a good way - or two - to complete the Arcs Box.

I particulary like the fact that rather than just providing L W H and what kind of wood - you also provide some info about how pieces came to be. Good reference for anyone looking for WHY rather than just HOW.

Thanks!

What I'm dealing with on this one is that the drawer fronts are basically banana shaped, but not tapering at the ends. And the drawer wants to be of rectangular cross section. So by the time you fit that rectangle inside the banana, you end up with really shallow drawers with lots of dead space between them. And that just won't do. If it were on a larger scale I would probably make three separate drawer boxes and offset the middle one. But on this little guy I'm fussing around with one box, and going through a lot of trouble just to get an extra quarter inch depth in the middle. Which doesn't sound like much of anything, but it's the difference between being able to get a padded ring bar in there or not.

I hope so. There's a little voice in the back of my head saying it looks like a mutant bull crossed with a trophy.

I am doing a fair bit of wholesale work these days, and it is generally pretty boring stuff. One can only make so many dovetailed cedar boxes before one just needs something different - and that can be the seed of an idea too. I'm tired of *this*, what can I do that is *not* this, doesn't require any of the same procedure, but still performs the same function.

At this point I'm really enjoying just playing with those seeds and seeing where they go. I am more interested in the idea and the final product, and not so concerned with how I get there, whereas before it was more the process that I was enjoying rather than the result. I have great respect and appreciation for those who have taken on a particular style of work and really flushed it out through many iterations over many years and the results are something that is just

*right* on a level that I have never reached. At this point trying to do that just doesn't get me up anxious to get into the shop in the morning like the promise of something new that might turn out interesting or be a total disaster. There is always time in the future to go back to an idea and refine it. I haven't found a style that I want to settle down and have kids with either.

The tornado vases in the shop were actually parts from an abandoned concept. I don't recall where the inspiration for the idea came from, but the plan was to have four towers of basically just cups, so each tower was a stack of cups. Each layer would have spokes coming out to a middle tower that would allow them to rotate independently. Align the towers and it's closed. Turn any layer an eighth of a turn and you have access to it. By making each tower out of a different species you could then just by turning the layers create different patterns. So I went and made all the cups, and I stacked them up into towers and positioned them the right distance apart. And it was the dumbest looking thing I'd ever seen. I'm sure there's something to that concept, but that particular execution of it was not working, at all. So I started just playing around with the pieces and had a few thoughts, but nothing was really jumping out at me. So I just stacked them up loosely to get them out of the way to move on, and I thought, hey that sort of looks like a tornado. About 10 minutes later they were all glued up like that. It's not high art, but I salvaged something out of it and moved on.

It is always a challenge every time I complete something to be sold to list it and be faced with the empty 'Description' box. While the photography is key to selling online, it can never replace the feeling someone has actually being able to see the thing in front of them, touch it, manipulate it. I think the description is where you not only have to give the factual information, but try to give people that little bit something more to push them over the edge, to form some kind of connection. I think you do that by being yourself. Which is handy because I couldn't fake it if I wanted to, I am not a salesman by any stretch of the imagination. And you are dead on, usually people just give the facts, or they try to dress it up with lots of impressive sounding words. I also don't want to get bogged down in the minute details that only another woodworker would be interested in.

I don't know what I will do if/when I get to the point of selling anything I turn. There's only so much you can say about a bowl.

OK - so they used to be called "holes" before Art Speak changed them to Negative Space.

A turning usually relies on light reflecting off it's surface for you to see it. And changing how that light is reflected can change the look of the piece - carving, texturing, sandblasting, patination, metal leafing - and yes - piercing (aka holes).

Let's focus on exploiting "piercing".

WHAT IF - there was a light source INSIDE the turning - say a small LED?

Gimmick or another "color" for a turner's "pallet"?

Negative space isn't just holes, but semantics aside...

Could go either way, I think this is one of those things you just gotta dive in and see what happens.

-Kevin