Since it is only 6 more months till Christmas Denny decided it was time to start working on decorations. The pictures speak for themselves.
The July 2014 woodturners’ meeting was highly influenced by PBS’ Create network which has a new show featuring woodturning with Tim Yoder. The episode that inspired Denny was one of making a showman out of wood, in this case mahogany.
1.) Denny began by roughing out a cylinder with a 1” roughing spindle gouge.
2.) He dimensioned at three places using a parting tool, and floowong his drawing, he marked where the snowballs intersected.
3.) He offered the tip to work towards the chuck when possible.
4.) A bedan was used to size the snowman’s hat, but a pointed parting tool could alternatively be used.
5.) He trimed the brim of the hat.
6.) Next he used a parting tool to mark the body divisions.
7.) The round “snowballs” were rounded with a bowl gouge.
8.) He alternated between the bedan and bowl gouge to form the three round bodies.
No snowman would be complete without sticks for arms, so Denny used a technique employing multiple centers to form the sticks.
1.) He use two pieces about the size of a pen blank, about 4” long.
2.) The first segment was made by deliberately not choosing the center of the wood.
3.) After roughing, the speed was increased a lot, because in Denny’s words, “We are turning a lot of air.” For this he used a small spindle gouge.
4.) When the first segment was turned impossibly thin (IMHO,) the center was changed, a different wobble was introduced to the piece, and the next segment was turned down, at an angle to the first segment. The wobble makes the joints in the arms.
5.) Denny also offered that the arms could be glued of different pieces.
A short conical piece was turned and colored with a carrot colored marker and glued on for a nose. Black dots were offered for the buttons. The corn cob pipe was done in separate sections, because as everyone knows corn cobs have a rough texture. For this, Denny used an old box cutter knife as a texturing tool for the corn cob. A short stem was made and the corn cob pipe body was drilled out for the pipe stem.
Denny later sanded the finished the snowman being careful not to use too much friction on the finish, as to avoid melting any of the pieces.
