Running Dog Woodworking

So, believe it or not, Christmas is coming.  This year we’ll be selling our wares at the Circle Craft Christmas Market for the fourth year.  Circle Craft is Vancouver’s largest and best craft market.  It is a juried show featuring 265 artisans and artists from across Canada.   This year three of the woodturners (Dale Rouleau, Jason Marlow and us) will also be demonstrating woodturning.  The show is at Canada Place and runs Nov. 11 to 15.  See Circle Craft’s website for more info.  Come on out.  It is a great place to do some Christmas shopping before the true screwiness of the season kicks in.

I will be teaching a one day class on turning pepper mills using the Crushgrind mechanism.  The class will be on Saturday, October 3rd at the Lee Valley Tools location in Coquitlam B.C.  The course will be a hands on and the students will be following, more or less, the method I posted earlier in this blog.  You can find more info at Lee Valley’s website.

We will be doing a show in the month of September in the Circle Craft Gallery on Granville Island.  This is a good chance to see the full range of what we’re doing right now.  You can find more info at the Circle Craft Gallery website.

I’ve been turning rolling pins lately.

I turn a lot of rolling pins.  I use a story stick to mark out the workpiece diameter in five places and then I used to use three different calipers to measure the diameter as I parted down in the marked locations.  I would occasionally pick up the wrong caliper or the calipers would sometimes move and I would sometimes ruin workpieces.

My solution was to take an old cabinet scraper and cut three dovetail shaped openings.  I used a cutting wheel on my angle grinder to cut the openings and a grinding wheel to grind the points of the dovetail back until I had size of the opening exactly right.  I also cleaned up the cut edges with the grinding wheel so that they weren’t sharp.  Of course, you also want to round off the corners of the openings so they’re not grabby.  A hacksaw and a file would also work.  The reason for the dovetail shape on the opening is that the caliper slips over the workpiece and then drops into the bigger part of the opening.  This prevents the caliper from being too grabby or burning a line into the wood.

These take an hour or two to make, but if you’re making a lot of something that has to be turned down to a few consistent diameters then I think this is the way to go.  I no longer have to set my calipers, or worry about them drifting.  I pick up one tool and work my way from one end of the spindle to the other.  This saves a fair bit of time when I’m making a bunch of identical items.

Teardrop Pepper Mills

These are my Teardrop Pepper Mills.  They are turned on three axis.  The front of the blank is sawn off, turned, and then glued back onto the rest of the blank to produce the curve at the front of the mill.  The two long sides are turned using a therming process.

Lately I have been spending a lot of time trying to work the wrinkles out of the therming process.  This process involves mounting several workpieces on a plate or drum mounted on a lathe.  You can then make a multi-sided object by turning one side at a time and then flipping the workpieces.  Ok, that explanation is pretty hard to figure out, so one of these days I’m going to write an article explaining it.   This isn’t a new method.  I learned it from Art Liestman, and I think it has been around for a long time.

Welcome to my blog.  I don’t know how often I’m going to be able to post to this thing, but I have great ambitions, so we’ll see how it goes.

I am a full time production woodturner, who occasionally delves into the artsy, but mostly makes utilitarian things for the kitchen.  I have been at this full time for over a year, and for several years before that part time, but I still consider myself a relative newcomer to the field.  With this blog I intend to post notes on my methods, as well as pictures of new work as I do it.  Most of my methods will be old hat to experienced woodturners, but I have developed a few wrinkles which I think work well, so hopefully there will be something here even for old hands.  I worked as a mechanical and process engineer for 20 years before quitting to do this full time, so I am always analyzing my methods and trying to find better ways of doing things.  I am hoping to learn something from this blog as well, so please do comment if you think there is a better way than mine.

Thanks for your attention.