Building The Handcok Shaker Candle Stand

The first part of the table we need to make is the spindle and we're gonna rough it in. We're not gonna finish the whole thing. But to start, we're gonna start to do the layout. And what I've got here is just a 19 inch block long, 19 inch long block of cherry. And of course it needs to be round. It's not gonna work for what we need it to do. Being square. So we're gonna put this in a lathe of course and turn it. So you need to find the center of it. And the easiest way, they make little tools to set on the edges and stuff. But you could just use any kind of straight edge and just cross the corners. And that will find the center of the blank. And then you just take your little awl or a nail or anything and kind of locate that where you can get our dividers in it. And this, the reason we're laying this out, we need to take these corners off before we go to the lathe. It saves a lot of time turning. I mean you can go straight from here and turn the corners off in the lathe if you want to. But this saves a tremendous amount of time. So we're gonna rough this blank into somewhere around three inches. So we're gonna set our dividers right here about one and a half. And this is just kind of for a rough layout. It doesn't have to be just spot on or anything. And we just make a circle. Get back in there. Make a little circle around just like that. And of course we'll go to the other end, do the same thing. And all that is is a guide. Because what we want to do is take the corners off and make it look like this. And you can see how much closer to our baseline here we are just by taking those corners off. Several ways you can do that. This one, they've been sawn off. Take a hatchet, anything handy. Just knock those corners off. Saves a lot of time on the lathe. So with that done, we're ready to go to the lathe and get started with the turning. We are ready to start turning, rough this spindle in for the table. A little bit about a few tools here. Not many. Mine are just older, nothing real expensive. But they turn up. They do make much better quality stuff than I have, but I don't do a lot of turning. So this does okay for me. But you don't need many. You really don't even need all these. But use a small little roughing gouge. And here's another one that's just a little bit larger. And then two different skews. The straight one is the one I use the most. This little curved one has a little straight section here. And I do use that part of it more than the curved. And then this last one is the parting tool. So now we're ready to rough this blank in. And when you go to check it up, kinda look at the grain of your piece of wood. And this one's pretty good on both ends. I know I've got just a little, I've got a little bit of sapwood right through this side and it's not as deep on this end. So this end is gonna be turned smaller. I usually put the small end to what would be my right. But I don't guess it makes any difference as far as how you orient it and lathe. But anyway, got it clamped up there. A lathe, this is an electric one. It's an older, this was made in 1947. It's an old Delta that turned up a while back. But there's several different options on lathes. Try to get, if you're buying an electric one, of course the heavier and bigger the better, but they also get very expensive. But there's options like spring pole lathes, which can be built out of very little wood, very little material. And they'll work, you can make this table on one. Of course treadle lathes too, which are a little more complicated. So different options, but this is an electric one. And so I've got it clamped up there. And of course also too, the anything, well any woodworking, you need to be careful. Protect your eyes. If you've got a piece you've got any doubt about, a face shield is a good idea. Because I have had one have a check or something that you didn't see and a piece fly out. Fortunately enough, it didn't hit me, but it went the other direction. But you never know. So I've got it chucked up here. And I'm gonna set my tool rest here, just as close as I can get it. And I'm gonna rotate it by hand before I turn the lathe on. And just using the bigger gouge here, we're gonna bring just, right now all I'm concerned with is just getting it round over its length, which it won't take very long. It's pretty quick because we've already knocked these corners off. So, so here we go. And all we're doing here is just working from big to small. So always, you're kind of working down the grain that way. And just go to it. See, we're already about round right there. So we're gonna move on down. And kind of see where we're at. And you see we're, we're round all the way around. So we're gonna move the rest down. Reset it. And finish up right here on this other end. Okay, now we have it, have our spindle is round. Of course it's rough and that's okay. So now we need to move on and get ready to rough this in just a little bit further. And to do that, what I'm gonna do is use my pattern here. And I'm just gonna, you can do this with the lathe running, but I'm gonna do it with it off so you can hear me. But the, you can make a pretty good mark once it's spinning, you can usually see it. So what I'm marking right here, this is our shoulder line on the, get where you can see it there. The shoulder right here, this little, right there at the top of where the legs are gonna meet. And I'll make another mark out here, say about right here. One right here. And what I'm doing is laying out where the small section is for right now. And this is our other shoulder right here on the end. So what I'm gonna do at this point is take a parting tool and I'm gonna score in right here and just a little bit right here and then come back with a gouge and I'm gonna rough this shape out and then we'll stop at that point. So, see if I can see my lines here. Yeah, we can see them. We're gonna darken those up just a little bit. And so right here is the, this will be the top of the, where it finishes, start to actually, the tenon that attaches the top will be right here. So I'm gonna cut in here and delineate that. I'm gonna move right here and I'm just gonna go down just a little bit right here to mark it. Move our wrist one more time. And now all this is just gonna get hogged out right here and it doesn't have to be smooth or anything like that. Just want it gone. Okay. What I'm doing here, this piece is actually still just a little bit wet and I'll talk just a little bit more in a minute about that. So, if you'll notice by the shavings, the size of them, that's part of it, it cuts faster and easier, you know, when the wood's a little bit wet. Okay, so we're just about roughed in. I've got one more little section here and this will be actually be where the tenon is later on and knock it off. I'm gonna switch to this skew. It's got a little straight edge right there on it and I don't want to damage that shoulder. Okay, so that's pretty much roughed in and I kind of skipped over it, but like I said just a second ago, this part is just a little bit wet still. It's been air drying a few months, but it's wet inside and this is a good idea after you've air dried it a little bit, go ahead and turn it to a rough shape and let it dry. It'll dry much faster because we removed all this wood and you've opened up a little bit of end grain here and the remaining wood will dry out much faster with that removed. So, with that said, we're gonna move to one that's a little bit drier and ready to be finished up.