Hey Blog! This week I’ll be telling you about a fun craft I’ve only recently got into!
A few months ago, I was offered a lathe from a friend’s dad. It was in their car boot and was going to the tip. However, I salvaged it. We have a habit of skip-ratching (liberating useful items from skips), especially Dad, but this didn’t need to go to the skip in the first place. All it needed was a new gear belt. Having acquired that and borrowed a set of turning chisels, we started work on a few pieces of wood.
Some of the wood we have is crooked, some is pounded and splintered from my *awesome* strength at sword fighting with sticks, and some is in the firewood pile. However, there are a few good-sized logs and blocks of wood used to support pallets disassembled to build The Shed, and these were what we started with.
Perhaps I should explain what woodturning is and how it works. Well, woodturning is making a round shape out of wood, by means of a lathe: a framed machine, powered in the olden days by a string and a pedal to make it spin, or in the modern day by electricity. Either way, the wood is spun on the lathe, and a chisel is carefully applied to the outside surface of the wood. The sharp edge of the chisel cuts away a little of the wood at a time, so by taking a little while over it you can make a perfectly rounded cylinder, the centre of this being the axis you spun it on. Once you have a cylinder, you can then use finer chisels to make ridges along the cylinder, to look like a chair leg, or a tool handle; when a little more advanced you can also alter the position of the chisel and make bowls, or wooden balls, or little wooden mice.
The chisels themselves are very varied. The preliminary chisel to use, to get the wood down to a cylinder, is the Roughing Gouge. This is a broad, thick-headed chisel; ideal for taking large amounts of wood off in one go. We broke one of these trying to do something too heavy for the thin join to the handle, but with Dad’s welding skills, it is now shorter but perfectly serviceable! Next, you need different types of chisels for the different shapes you try to cut. Be gentle with these. The finer the groove you cut, the finer the chisel head you need. The more detail, the finer the head likewise. A bowl chisel looks like a normal turning chisel (thinish, round head on a thick shaft & handle), but has a very long shaft to reach into the bowl, and a long handle for stability. There is also another type of carving tool, but this is not a chisel – it is a piece of wire, preferably held between two pairs of pliers as it can get VERY hot. This cuts a very fine groove, and burns it as it cuts, producing a thin, black line. Right, I think you get the idea. Enough about which chisel is used for what, you want to hear about what I’ve made. Here goes.
I began carving by making a bowl out of an old pallet block. It was very much admired. At the time of writing, it is on my bedroom windowsill next to the random objects and probably containing a penny or two, a couple of interesting rocks, and maybe a scrap of paper. This gave me good experience using most of the different tools and prepared me for the next craft. This was a second bowl – the function of which is still secret as it is Mum’s last Christmas present and is as yet unfinished! However, I progressed better with my latest batch of creations – mice! I have been inspired by my Grandad on my Dad’s side (who I unfortunately never met); he made a wood turner out of an old washing machine motor and a few planks of wood, and then went on to make a lot of different items, mice among them. I have been following in his footsteps and have made many mice of my own! Some I will keep, some I will give as presents, and some I will probably sell if there is a village fair on this year. I’m looking for more ideas to create, so watch this space!
