This is not even finished yet.....the turning or the finish........with so many activities today, I ran out of time to finalize the form and it only has some shellac on it to pop the grain for a couple of pics, because I wanted to show the results of the design idea solicitation that I made with the claro walnut and yellowheart blanks I showed yesterday.
I still have to refine the curve from the lid up to the first element on the finial......and much sanding still has to be done.....then finish applied........I just wanted you folks to see where I am headed with this. I have to credit John Keeton with some of the inspiration for this form.........he sent me a sketch a couple of years ago.......I lost it somehow, and this is from memory.......I am sure it is not exactly as he sketched it out, but it has most of the features.
Now.......this one was much harder than I anticipated. The wings that curve down to make four feet for it to set upon make getting the tools to shape the bowl a really tedious process........I had to use different techniques than I normally use to keep from exploding the thing........push cuts straight in with a detail gouge is about the only thing I had in my arsenal that would allow shaping of the outside of the bowl part.
I was disappointed that I could not get the arches in the legs/wings to go up as high as I wanted, and it left the legs a bit wider than I wanted, but with the tools I have, that was the best I could do......maybe if I had a longer detail gouge I could have gotten them higher.
To top that off .......one of the wings broke on me ........twice!I was able to glue it back on, but the slightest catch and the way the grain was on this piece just made it pop off!
I had to shorten them about 1/2" or maybe more to get the things straightened out to sit properly. Also.......many steps to reverse both bowl portion and lid.......and adding the finial to the top and refining it to proper proportion required reversing the lid twice as well.
What I found out { I think} with the depth of the claro, was that the wings did not flare out enough to suit me.......but a shallower blank would have lent itself to more flared out wings, and given it a better overall presence.......perhaps that is optimistic, but I think that would be the case.
I have had that piece of claro walnut two years......it must have been dipped multiple times in parafin wax.......the thing was still wet on the inside! Cuts were fairly easy, but end grain was hard to deal with.
I will take this back to the lathe, and do some more shaping and then do some finish work, but I thought I would ask how you like the direction I took with this..........it is my first time doing this type of form, and there is definitely a learning curve with it.......I hope to get better at it with a few more under my belt. Comments appreciated, and thanks to all who replied on my design thread!!!
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Originally Posted by Fred Belknap
