I helped our club demo what we do at this year’s “Summer Harvest Festival” at the Heritage Museum in Princeville. This is the second year I’ve helped with the demo, so I knew what to expect going in and tried to bring along a wide selection of projects to work on. I started with a wig stand to show what the club is doing to help cancer patients. It turned out pretty good and allowed us to talk with quite a few people when they’d look at it and ask, “what’s this”? Then moved on to a very small bowl made from a half rotten piece of redbud. The wood was in really, really bad shape, so my expectations weren’t very high when I started. Even so, the piece was ruined. About 95% into the turning, the piece cracked itself nearly in half while a group of kids and their mom were watching. Luckily, no pieces flew into the crowd, but it was a total loss. I ended up handing it to one of the kids and let him finish breaking the bowl in half. Who knew that would be such a big hit! I made a cedar bowl that turned out pretty good and gave that to another kid, on the condition he give it to his mom and tell her thank you for being a good mom. Yeah, it made her cry, but they were happy tears. I made little spin tops for some other kids (made them smile), made a pizza cutter for another guy in the club who was injured and couldn’t turn (he’s giving it to his sister and I’m sure they’ll both smile) , and spent some time making a very small ring box that I gave away to a little girl to hold her keepsakes in. More smiles.
On the last day, I put on a chunk of mulberry that I didn’t get around to turn at last year’s demo, so it was completely dry. After rounding it, I decided to make a box and started the hollowing process. The hollowing was slow, but the turning process threw chips all over the place. It seemed like the bigger the mess, the more people came by to watch and ask questions. When the day was over, I wasn’t done with the piece and took it home.
It took me a week or so to get the time to work on it and when it was done, there was absolutely no doubt I had created something really, really ugly. The wood color wasn’t all that great, it was way too “straight” looking and even though the wood was dry, it had moved from circular to slightly oval, so the lid only fit in one position.
After staring at it a few days, I decided to change directions. That’s when things just kinda started to happen on their own, in fairly rapid succession. I put it back on the lathe and thinned the middle of the box down to leave the rings or bands on the top and bottom. That helped break up the straightness of the piece. Once the wood was thinner, I decided to try out the new CNC bits I bought and started the tedious piercing process. That help lessen the plain, straight, boring grain. About 20 minutes in, my daughter said, “you should put some kind of word or saying inside the piercing”. After we talked, I decided to put a song/lyric from Bill Joel on the outside. (If anyone is familiar with the song, please don’t call the white coats on me, there’s a whole story and conversation behind why that was chosen that does NOT relate to suicidal depression!) It took a bit to get the stencil transferred, but once done, the piercing resumed. All the piercing made it prettier, but the lid still didn’t fit all that way. I put the lid back on the lathe, with the sole intent of just making the lid fit a little looser. Honest! Well, that’s when things just kinda happened, again. Since I had added bands and piercing to the box, I figured I should do the same thing to the lid. I thinned out the wood on the top and started the equally tedious process of piercing the lid like I had done on the sides. I liked it, but there was a hole in the middle where I needed to put some kind of knob or finial. I made one knob, that was short and wide, but that made the whole thing look too short and fat. I made a tall finial, but that just looked really, really bad, because the proportions were all wrong. I decided to take another piece of mulberry and see if I could make a small, hollow sphere. Turns out I could! When I sat it on the box lid, it looked ok from a size perspective, but it also didn’t really tie into the rest of the piece. Ok, I thought, I’ll just pierce it, too!
This is the final product. All things considered, this turned out a LOT better than I ever expected it to. Here’s to persistence, eh? Maybe not my best work, but I’m getting better at the whole piercing thing. It also got me thinking, and the next project will be a further step into the wonderful world of “This was fun, but I wonder if I can…”
