Before talking about the items I made this year as Christmas gifts for family and friends, I draw your attention to the natural-edged bowl on the “woodturned vessels” page. I made this bowl as a birthday gift for a dear family friend at the suggestion of my wife. It is made from a chunk of black walnut from a tree I cut down in early 2000’s. Obviously it was quite dry so I didn’t have to worry about the wood cracking as I worked with it. I did however have concerns about the bark breaking away as I turned the wood so I periodically soaked the edge of the bark with a thin version of cyanoacrylate adhesive (CA), best known as Krazy or Super glue. After completing the shape of the bowl, I also used the CA as the finishing material. CA is often used for finishing wooden objects that get a lot of handling such as pens, tool handles etc. CA is relatively easy to use as long as you have a means to vent the fumes and protect your skin and you don’t mind doing multiple coats with sanding in between. Overall I was very pleased with the outcome and the enjoyment it gave to our friend.
In the “everyday” page, there are two sets of salt and pepper mills that I made as Christmas gifts for my sons. The first is made of pau rosa, a deep red colored hardwood from Africa. The other is made of bocote, a hardwood with a green cast found in Mexico and Central/South America. I chose these two woods because they are less dense and thus easier to drill than some hardwoods. The grinder mechanisms, made by a company called CrushGrind, use ceramic cutters to withstand the corrosive effect of salt. The coarseness adjustment is on the bottom of the mechanism eliminating the metal knob found on top of traditional pepper mills and allowing for endless design possibilities.
Figuring how to best show off the beauty of the wood while creating a pleasing design is the fun part of wood turning. But the process of constructing mills is fairly complicated. The initial block of wood is approximately 3 x 3 x 12 inches. After turning it to a cylinder shape, the top handle section or grinding knob is cut away from the body. A number of drilling steps take place with several drill bit sizes ranging from 1& 3/4 inches to 15/16 inches. The bottom of the block is drilled to create the space for the grinding mechanism, and then, using a smaller bit, a hole is drilled all the way through the body creating a virtual tube of wood. Mounting the mechanism in the bottom of the tube creates the storage space for the unmilled salt/pepper. Part of the grinder mechanism is hidden in the top knob and drilling is required to make space for this unit. In a later step the top handle is shaped to fit into the top of the tube and to connect with the grinder mechanism.
With the drilling steps completed, the wood is remounted on the lathe to create the final shapes of the mills. I wanted to do something different from the classic spindle design of traditional mills. The pau rosa set uses similar design elements in both pieces but in a different sequence with the top knob in one being a basic ball and the other, a stepped cylinder. The bocote set uses the same design but the mills are distinguishable mills by having very different coloring and. grain patterns. The bocote set has pairs of black rings encircling the cylinder sections. Those black rings, which are seen on several objects displayed on my website, are a popular way of dressing up turned wood items. They are created by cutting a small groove in the spinning wood and then applying a wire to the groove and holding the wire tight against the wood until friction heats the wire to the point of burning the wood and leaving a blackened ring. The thickness of the ring is determined by the gauge of the wire.
The wood blanks used for these mills were purchased from an online vendor and arrived with a thick coating of wax to prevent them from drying too fast. High moisture content is always a concern and wood has to dry slowly to avoid cracking or checking. As I worked on the mills, I would continuously put the partially completed parts in sealed plastic bags to control moisture loss. I wasn’t too worried about the mill bodies because drilling out the centers removes a lot of moisture but the top knob section is another story. I did end up with some minor checking (small cracks) on the upper surfaces.
Ed