Category Archives: July 2017

Mushroom like houses

Our town has a yearly “fine arts festival”, where they shut down three or four streets in the heart of town, invite a hundred or so artists in a wide variety of mediums to set up booths, then sit back and wait for thousands and thousands of people to herd through the narrow streets.  Apparently, enough people buy things from the booths and the local businesses get enough business from the hoard of people passing by, that this thing is likely to continue.  Each time I’ve gone, I ask myself why I subject myself to the experience.  I’ve never liked big crowds, especially when the crowd is made up of people who are trying to one-up their co-meandering partner with their advanced knowledge of art theory, art history, the use of negative space, and the essentials of “form”.  It’s always in mid July, so it is certain to be very hot, very humid, and very sweaty.  I see the old folks lumbering behind their  walkers and make a mental not to brush up on my CPR skills.  Small babies cooking in their strollers makes my heart skip a beat and I have to stifle the urge to confront the parents.  There is one booth that sells pointy, stained glass creations, meticulously hung from clear fishing line about five feet off the ground, appropriately called “eye catchers”.  I saw a kid, about 6 years old, pick up  a huge ceramic bowl that had a $450 price tag on it and cringed as his parents continued to ignore what he was doing.  It’s only a matter of time until something really bad happens…

On the way home, I realized that like many, many other weekend crafters and would be artists who go to this thing, the reason I went was to see if there was any ideas I could “incorporate” and to look for “inspiration”.  That’s a kind way of saying “anyone else’s creativity that I can steal”.  This year I found a ceramics shop that was selling these little houses, kinda shaped like mushrooms, that actually looked cute when they were arranged together like a miniature village.  I listened to the ceramicist/artist explain that each 3″ tall house took hours of painstaking skill, painting, and molding to create, obviously trying to justify the $35/each price tag that went with each one.  Free enterprise is a wonderful thing, but the smell of BS was suddenly wafting through the crowd and I felt the urge to keep moving.  When I got home, I took some scrap wood and turned out these little copies.  It took longer to dye the wood and burn in the doors and windows than it did to do the actual turning, which I suspect is pretty consistent to the time and effort spent by the ceramicist on the originals.

Here is the first batch.  I have a shelf that these will likely go on or maybe my desk at work, along with the others that I intend to make.  After looking at these all together, it seems pretty clear that using wood without a lot of knots is a must!  I’ve also come to realize the village they live in could use a good contractor.  Seems like some pretty shoddy building methods and a total failure on the part of the building inspector…

First batch of little houses.
Close up #1
close up #2

 

 

Plywood bowl #2

After making the last two things from plywood, I still had plywood left over, so I figured I’d make something that was a combination of the last two projects.  From the first effort, I took a bowl shape, but decided to make is more shallow and smaller.  From the second effort, I took the (dangerous) cutting of the plywood to make the vertical stripes.  Put those two together and this is the final product.  About 13″ across, 4 inches tall, finished with two coats of Danish Oil to make the color a warm, soft, brown and two coats of Wipe on Poly for a little protection.

I figured I was done playing around with plywood, but as I was cleaning up the garage this weekend, I found some 1/8″ plywood over in a corner.  Hum…  If I wanted 90 segments, that would be a two degree bevel…

Cutting that many thin strips of plywood with a slight bevel on each edge to make the circle is not for the faint of heart!

 

 

Plywood box

About halfway through working on the basket bowl, I started thinking about “what if”…  One of the ideas, was to make a bowl where the plywood was all vertical.  I thought if I did it right, I could make something that looked like the inside of a grass hut.  Kind of a Gilligan’s Island looking thing.  Once I got the first experimental plywood blank glued up, I switched gears to making this one.  To start, I thought I’d use thinner plywood to keep the size from creeping up as the pieces were assembled.  This one is made from 1/4″ plywood.

Not to get in the weeds, but to make a circle, each piece of wood has to be cut to a very specific angle, so when they’re reassembled, they form a circle.  The formula is pretty easy to understand.  360 divided by the number of segments divided by 2.  If you want to make a 10 segment ring, it would be 360/10/2 or 18, so each piece of wood would be cut at 18 degree angles.  For this project, I figured I’d need at least 30 segments to make a ring big enough, since each vertical piece was only going to be 1/4 inch at their widest point.  So do the math and that comes down to a 6 degree angle.  I looked at the 1/4″ wide plywood, looked at the table saw, and suddenly realized this was going to be the most dangerous thing I’ve attempted.  The danger comes in when you try to take a piece of wood only a quarter of an inch think through a table saw, with the blade set at 6 degrees.  Not a lot of room between the table saw fence and the blade.  To make it at least a little better, I cut the angles at 12 degrees, which for this project, wouldn’t be noticeable.  Still only 1/4” “safety” between the fence and the blade.

Took me a bit to get up the nerve, but I was finally able to make strips of plywood, with the appropriate angle, that I could cut into pieces.  Initially, I was thinking it would make a bowl, but the 1/4″ only came out with a circle about 4-5 inches across.  Not really big enough for a useful bowl.  Add in a couple simple circles of plywood, and the blank became perfect for a small box.  If I do another one of these, I think I’ll use the 3/4″ plywood, then glue the strips together before making the beveled cut.  This will give me an inch and a half thick piece of wood to run through the table saw and mean I won’t need as many piece to make the circle.  Maybe that won’t give me the heebie jeebies as bad.

Here’s the final product, with two coats of walnut oil, followed by two coats of wipe on poly.

Plywood box, with a walnut knob.