A wood turned bottle stopper that I made for my father for Christmas 2014. The wood is ash from a neighbor's tree, with mahogany and pecan interlocking rings. The pecan is from my sister's tree, and the mahogany is from an old door.
Been waiting to see more of your work, and you didn't disappoint. Beautifully made and finished. Have you ever done knife scales before? I was thinking of having a go at putting some nice wood on my M-Tech knife, but it'd be a hell of a big job for an amateur like me.
Sure thing. I started with a solid blank of ash, approximately 2 inches square by roughly 12 inches long. the length was mostly to make the next steps easier, as well as to give me a bit of extra material with which to work on the lathe. The pecan and mahogany wood strips were resawn and planed to the exact same thickness as the kerf created by my table saw blade. There was some trial and error with a test piece to get the thickness just right. I used my table saw to make a single diagonal cut in the ash blank. I forget the exact angle I used on this piece - it was something around 40 degrees. The depth of the cut came just to the edge of the blank; I wanted to keep the blank in one piece to make the glue-up a bit easier. I glued a piece of the pecan into the slot and clamped the blank from end-to-end to ensure a nice, tight joint. When the glue was dry, i trimmed the excess pecan, rotated the ash blank 90 degrees, then made another diagonal cut. This time I placed a piece of mahogany in the slot. Glue, , clamp, wait for the glue to cure, trim, rotate 90 degrees, rinse repeat. When rotating the blank and making each successive cut, it's crucial to make sure that the blank is held in the jig the exact same way each time. I numbered the sides in succession from 1-4, and the numbers were all on one end of the blank. That way I knew exactly which way to orient and rotate the blank. Basically this created a pecan strip on two opposite faces of the ash blank, and a mahogany strip on the other two opposite faces. I then put the blank on my lathe and turned it down to the final design. After trueing up the blank, the 'rings' may not quite line up right. Once you turn down far enough, they suddenly connect. The amount of space between the ring intersections is controlled by the final thickness of the piece. Writing up the steps makes the whole thing sound a bit convoluted. Paul Jenkins, one of the many woodworkers on YouTube, has a great breakdown of the process. He turned a pen so his blanks and cuts were on a smaller scale, but the basic process is the same. The first part of the video shows him making a special jig to make the diagonal cuts. I just used my standard crosscut sled with some stop blocks.
Brilliant work, really impressive. Was just looking in another thread there of a wand you done for your daughter as well, it looks great as well.
