One of the President’s Challenges I set for my woodturning club, was a collaboration piece that was worked on by two or more members of the club. While that may sound like a fairly straight forward challenge, there were actually some ulterior motives. Woodturning is usually a solitary activity, so something about sharing that creative space with another person who shares a similar interest felt like it could be really fun. I was also hoping it would enable people to try to make something that wasn’t what they usually did. I figured if it turned out bad, they could all point to the other guy as the reason and no one would have any hurt feelings. The main reason, though, was to try to “force” more interaction between club members. The vast majority of the members are creatures of habit. They make the same things they’ve always made, they talk with the same people they’ve always talked to, and they are incredibly comfortable with the status quo. I suspect the pandemic has put a major crimp on my plans, but we can’t stay locked down forever!
For my entry, Two friends of mine from the club, Bob and Jeff, agreed to make something with me. The idea was to make little bird houses that sat on top of a finial. We decided to use standard 2×2 pine lumber from the big box stores, since it would be cheap and all of our pieces would match in terms of overall thickness. Then, each of us would make two pieces for a total of 6, with each of those 6 pieces being two inches shorter than the one next to it. The goal was to make something that looked kinda like the baseball world series trophy, only much cuter.
If I’m being honest, my first effort was definitely in the “playing it safe” range. I went with a very simple, straightforward shape, and figured I could add a little color if it needed it. When I was done dying the roof and the house, well, things started happening. I painted the stem white, just to offset the bright colors from the house and roof. Then the white looked too plain, so I decided to put some vines climbing up the stem. Then the vines looked kinda plain, so I decided to paint some flowers, which also looked plain. As I was looking at the different colors of paint, I found some “puff paint”, so I switched to that so the flowers would stick out and add some texture. The black in the middle, also puff paint, ended up making a hard, sharp, point, so it’s almost like the flowers have thorns.
If we’re still being honest, my second effort is a little over the top. My initial thought was to make the birdhouse be in the shape of a hot air balloon, but I scrapped that, because I didn’t want to make one that was completely different than the others. I decided to go with the hot air balloon idea, but have it be tethered to the top of the birdhouse. It took a bit to figure out how to get it to to look like it was floating, but thanks to Bob’s input, I ended up using a stiff piece of wire with a blue corded string glued around it, with really thin copper wire to make the basket harness. By the time I got finished with the bright dyes and the woodburning, this looked surprisingly like what I had in my head when I started out.
With my pieces done, it was time to assemble all 6 and see what we came up with, at least that was the plan. COVID, however, had different ideas. These all sat in their respective houses while we waited and waited and waited for a time where we could get back together and assemble the final piece. Eventually, we were able to reunite the 2×2 we had cut into pieces and I have to say I was quite pleased with the final result. Now the only thing left to do it figure out which member of the collaboration gets to claim ownership of the piece.
