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Hi, Alan Stratton from As Wood Turns dot com. Last weekend I had the opportunity to visit
the Chihuly museum which contains a lot of glass art. At this time, particularly, glass
art by Australian glass artists. I was inspired. It was a lot of beautiful glass work, none
of it very functional, but beautiful art, none the less. I thought, why should I let
the Aussie's have all the fun. I like wood, I like glass. Let's do something like they
did but let's do it in wood. What do we call this? I don't know. Melted cone, slumped cone,
I don't know. It's totally useless, totally non-functional, yet beautiful.
Let's show you how to make this piece of art. The first order of business is to cut the
segments. Each ring has eight segments cut at 22.5 degrees. I've setup a chop saw at
the angle and a stop block to gauge the segment length.
Next is to glue the segments into half rings. For me, it's next to impossible to cut segments
accurately enough to glue them all at once. So, I'll glue into half rings first, then
sand the flat side of the half ring. Finally for the segment rings, I'll glue the
two halves together and reclamp. With all the rings glued up, they need to
be trued up. I'm sanding one side of each ring on a home built sanding disk. It's made
from a steel faceplate and a 20" Aluminum plate. It's really nice when sanding the face
of segments. With one side flat, I'll tape the rings to
a board with double stick tape and run them thru a thickness sander to achieve a uniform
thickness. Normally, I would exercise great care when
gluing the rings into a stack and do it one at a time.. However, the stack for this project
is offset anyway. The only thing to pay attention to is to rotate each ring one half segment
with respect to its neighbor. I'll glue these all at once but mark alignment points with
some blue tape. About sixty-five pounds of weight should be enough to clamp it together.
The base is three layers of MDF for waste rings.
Then at the bandsaw, I'm sawing a 20 degree angle thru the waste MDF, then sand the base
flat, mount it to a faceplate with hot melt glue, and add a couple of layers of pine to
the top. This whole layup is confusing and difficult to visualize.
Finally at the lathe, I get to do some turning. Everything is at an odd angle. The pine likes
to splinter. I'll keep the tail stock in place for a measure of safety. Then, gradually smooth
out the exterior. In the pine section, I'll cut a tenon that I'll use later to reverse
mount the cone. Easy does it, I cannot afford any bad catches or miss cuts. I'll start with
a gouge and later switch to a carbide cutter. The walnut is all face grain, but it alternates
with nasty MDF. Nice shavings from the walnut -- awful dust from the MDF.
Finally, I'll remount the cone using the tenon in a four jaw chuck. Since I'm a bit nervous
about whether the pine can hold the cone, I'll keep the tail stock in place until near
the end of the hollowing. Still, easy does it -- I don't want any heavy cuts with this
weird glue up. I'll work from the large end with a square then round carbide bit.
Finally, with most of the hollowing completed, I'll cut away the nub for the tail stock and
finish the hollowing. Then I'll sand and finish the cone with walnut
oil. Then let the oil dry overnight. Finally, carefully saw away the MDF base and pine top.
Then sand and oil again. And voila. The special challenge was to visualize
the project. It would have been easy to make a cone with the segment rings horizontal and
then saw off the base at an angle. However, I think having the grain run horizontally
to the finished piece contributes a lot to its appeal. Next time, I would not use MDF:
it was very nasty to turn and even more nasty to sand. This sort of project opens a whole
world of alternatives that I'll have to explore. Where could it go next?
Be sure to like this video and subscribe to my website and YouTube channel. Safe turning
makes for good turning -- Please wear your face shield. Until next time, this is Alan
Stratton from As Wood Turns dot com.