Oh cruel ice storm,
Your brittle rain of terror
must finally end.
A late season blast of wintry weather in Southern Ontario manifested as freezing rain and ice pellets in many areas. We lost power for about three hours in the middle of the night, so it could have been worse.
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Just finished this almost-matched set of canarywood bowls, about three and a half inches across.
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In November 2009 I took some private instruction on the lathe from local wood turner Larry Cluchey. I started a bowl from green wood that day, then sealed it up and put it away for "a few months" to wait for it to dry. Today I dug it out and finished it. I don’t recall what type of wood this is, but it would have been something from his property, nothing exotic.
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I just made this sturdy little bowl from a sandwich of Lacewood and Maple, from the same stock as the two recent grinders. It’s about three inches tall, and just under 5 inches across at the equator.
I made a couple more of those grinders from a while back, this time in lacewood with a creamy maple filling.
I made a couple more of these tiny wee bowls today. About three inches across, the one on the left is purpleheart sandwiched by zebrawood, the one on the right is zebrawood sandwiched by lacewood.
Here are the two I made a few days ago:
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This shallow bowl (or deep dish, I suppose) is about 7 inches in diameter, and made of cherry wood.
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This is a 3-drawer box I just made, mostly walnut with figured maple drawer fronts.
It’s about 8 inches tall, 6 inches wide, 5 inches deep. (My hand is shown for scale.)
The design is from The Box Builder’s Handbook by A.J.Hamler, which I more or less stuck to in this case. I was happy I could incorporate the sapwood of the walnut (the lighter parts) in a pleasing way.
I will probably add flocking to the drawer bottoms, but otherwise it’s done. So what’s next?
Lynda reports this morning that our Reeves pheasants, George and Martha, were found dead in their cage. I haven’t been down to see them yet, but it sounds like they met the same fate as befell Corny and Cornelia, the Lady Amherst pheasants who were killed last August. We figured it was a weasel at that time, but we’re not really sure.
Reeves pheasants have been described as “pugnacious”, and George was no exception. He was always pacing back and forth at the perimeter of his cage, ready to offer a sharp peck to the nose of any canine who got too sniffy. Which they did on an almost daily basis.
Here’s a look at the long pine table made of Eastern White Pine that I made for Lynda’s office. She was going to buy some cheap IKEA crap, but as I joked at the time, I felt I had the both the tools and the know-how to make our own cheap IKEA crap. Only not as cheap. And it doesn’t come apart for shipping in flat boxes. It’s had 3 coats of Wipe-on Poly (5 on the top) and some paste wax to shine it up a bit. It’s not perfect, but it turned out pretty well I think!
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