Some Christmas Woodworking…

So in the lead up to Christmas I was busy in my workshop building Sofia’s puppet theatre which was a lot simpler than the previous year’s Donkey, but at the same time I decided to get back to the lathe which looked a bit abandoned!

I had acquired some Oak and some Black Walnut from friends who had been renovating their houses/kitchens and decided that although these offcuts were thin I could laminate them to make something interesting.

I tend to buy bits and pieces for wood turning from the USA as very few UK suppliers have anything particularly interesting. A while back I found a source of some nice cheese knife blades and decided that this was an ideal opportunity to make some…

I decided that to add some detail to the handles for these knives I would use some blackwood cut down to about 6mm – this is the same wood used to make clarinets and bagpipe chanters.

Gluing these pieces together created a decent sized blank for turning.

In order to hold this on the chuck I created a stock from scrap wood onto which the blank could slide…

From here it was a matter of turning this to size/shape.

Once I achieved the desired shape I then had to replicate it for each of the knife ends. This was a bit of a challenge as I usually only ever make one-off pieces and this time I had to try and ensure I was copying the sizes and contours of my first piece. I resorted to a gauge and callipers.

Both the oak and the walnut turned really well and by polishing them while still on the lathe I managed to get a nice finish.

This simply left the cheese boards to do.

For both I decided to insert more blackwood detail into the circumference;

Again finishing on the lathe, and for the oak board, I inserted a green marble tile;

  

The Black Walnut polished up very nicely too;