Woodturning A Lidded Vessel

Welcome back to my shop. Today we have quite a complicated project and a few other issues we have to deal with. So first I would like to start with a call for help with some ideas. As you can see what I've laid here is a nice big chunk of what I can only assume is an off cut of a beam. It's about 60 centimeters long, a little bit shorter, 58 centimeters long, let's call it two feet, and it is 12 centimeters high so let's call it four and a half inch and it is 20 centimeters which equals to I don't know eight inches, eight and a half inches. If any of you guys have any idea what to do with a slab of wood like this I'm open to suggestion and I will if any good ideas come through then I would I would give it a go. So thank you with that. For today's project one of my subscribers a Mr. Alan Simpson from Ireland has sent me a box full of wood and I'm very excited because it's actually the first subscriber or anyone that sends me wood to turn. So here is the box he sent me. First of all there's this wood, this piece of wood. This is boxwood, great fine bit of work. Thank you Alan for stating that on the wood and in the letter that he added to the box. So this is boxwood, I've never worked with boxwood but it looks very solid, it's very heavy. I love the bark, the bark is amazing. If I'll do something with this it will probably some I will try to figure out how to do something with a natural edge because the bark is quite it's quite amazing. The bark looks like the skin of I think it's called the thing from the Fantastic Four. It's all scaly and it's a little bit soft but I think it can be preserved if done correctly. So this is a very nice piece of boxwood. I've got two branches or limbs of yaw which I've never worked with but I've seen a lot of Robbie the Woodturner work with it. You can find the link to his channel down in the description of the video. This is a very nice large piece of spalted beech which we will be using for today's project. It's got very nice figures and colors going around. I can't wait to turn this and see what's inside. It looks very nice, spalted beech and the the crown jewels of this shipment. I've got two pieces of bog oak, let me move this to the side. I've got two pieces of bog oak. This bog oak was actually dated by Mr. Allen and it was dated to 900 and something AD so we're talking about a thousand plus minus years old wood. Allen has warned me that it tends to be flaky and sensitive so to go really easy and take my time while working with it if I see some cracks or some defects or something that comes up during the turning some CA glue will harden that up. The idea for what I want to do today is actually a leaded vessel and if you remember I've tried once to create a small little leaded vessel with another piece of spalted wood. It's one of my earlier videos and it didn't work. So this will be a second try of a vessel and I'm going to use this large piece instead of the small I had before and again this leaded box I'm going to try and make will be in the style of Cindy Drozda. She's one of my favorite turners out there. The simplicity and the elegance of the things she turns is absolutely fantastic. What I thought about doing is taking this piece of mahogany that I have which is much larger than what I need in order to make what I want so what I think of doing is gluing both of these up pretty much center and then I will part off just about a centimeter and it will remain glued to the to the piece and be extra careful while spindle turning these two pieces so a lot of things to go wrong and I really really hope I really hope that I will be able to create something really nice from these beautiful pieces of wood giving honor to the style of Cindy Drozda and obviously many thanks to Adam for sending me this wood. Say these types of things like to skip a generation like the stones I've tossed and tossed across the rivers no matter the length they go along sing to the rivers bed you were buried underneath the dirt and the sand current washed away your sins and you're a brand new man you left everyone you had to try and stay on their own home gives me comfort knowing that notice at first when my eyes start to sag when I look in the mirror when I'm done throwing back a couple double bag bottles as we sit in the van that's parked behind the bar above the front door hangs on the unlit key that greets us meets us never leaves our glasses empty but it's me who always takes it too far say these types of things they just run in your blood like it was sewn in your skin you didn't have to sign up no it's one in the bag with the thief just beautiful wood I love the color and the grain and everything about it so now we're going to glue these two pieces flat roughly in the center obviously the more centered the better it will be scattered underneath the harvest moon and the wind blew ashes through the fields of your youth that you worked so hard on all your life now you're gone home gives me comfort knowing be all right be okay be just fine picked it up quickly I came in my sleep back to a clumsy walk home through the spinning streets that led me back to the most important thing is that that there will be full contact between the two pieces so the glue up would be effective nothing left but to leave this to dry for now we'll give it we'll give it a few hours to dry while we're while we are waiting for the glue to dry we're going to start working on the foot and the finial maybe I'm jumping the gun a little bit but I really want to go to get through this as quickly as possible so they will be ready get that uncomfortable you look just like him and boy that man is quite a fish so you best learn how to swim lived by a statement like that would it make you happy maybe these things they just skip a generation maybe these things they really run in your blood and maybe just maybe you never gave two shits about us as you were buried underneath the dirt and the grass and falling leaves pierce my shoulders like a narrow through the back in that life that you left behind they still love you they still love you as you can see there's quite a large crack here it's quite unfortunate but this piece is so unique to me and look at this grain it's absolutely beautiful and look at the cuts also coming from the skew while rubbing the bevel if I was going to send this right now I would start at 180 240 it's very smooth very nice I would love to see this with the finish but we have this big crack here this we will have to address I don't know how deep it goes but just to be sure what I'll do is get some CA glue fill this up with CA using some of the dust I've created right now a lot of fine powdery shavings and I will just push it in there I think I'll probably go and grab a couple of toothpicks to help me push everything inside tightly and then we'll take it from there well this is the shape I'm happy with it and we're going to sand it now very very very delicately and we're going to start with a high I prefer to sand for more time with a higher grit paper to get a better result so we'll do that just part it off I just need to sand the bottom with a Dremel tool let me focus this is the foot this will be the foot for our vessel this is the tenon the concave shape where my form will fit the foot this will send off and it's finished this is the second day of our project and the next part is probably the part I'm most scared of what we have here is a piece of spalted beech glued to a piece of mahogany and the original idea was for me to chuck this up this way using a friction chuck to part off a little bit of of the mahogany because I don't need all this width and I would like to save what I can for a different project but I've been thinking about it in the past few hours and it seems to me that I'm completely unsure that the spalted beech is strong enough to accept the screw and hold it so what I am planning to do now is a little bit different I'm going to keep the entire piece of mahogany with the screw to use it to chuck it up and then I will part a small piece of the spalted beech to use as the lid later on and I will glue this little piece of what I believe to be black locust that I have left over from a different project I will glue this at the back of the piece so I could use it as a tenon so as much as I'm scared to do it the only thing that is left is actually to mount this and and turn it so fingers crossed and wish me luck I'm going for it it used to be I'd hang on all your okay it took me the better part of a half an hour to round this off I actually had to go a lot smaller in diameter than I wanted to because there were some really funky parts on the outside I had to get rid of but now that I'm inside I can see that first of all the colors are just beautiful and the shapes that I got I have here with the spalting lines the different colorations of the wood with the different fungus it's it's like a textbook a textbook piece of wood I'm looking at the glue line and the connection between the foam and it is uh oh I'm sorry and it is absolutely perfect it is smooth and straight the transition is perfect you can feel it uh obviously you can see it because the different colors of the wood but there's no gaps there's nothing the spalted beech is much firmer than I thought it was so I'm reconsidering my plan to glue this piece on the back of it obviously I need to send this part also before I glue it but I just might not use it making making do with the smaller diameter means that the vessel will be smaller which is not always a bad idea I can see there's there's a lot of tear out but I did went a little bit of aggressively on the last cut with the ball gouge and I didn't take my time really I just wanted to smooth it all out to have a look so obviously I have to take it a little bit more carefully as you can see this part especially in this part okay so the first order of business would be to part a centimeter and a half maybe two centimeters at the end of heat of this piece so we could use it later as a lid so let's do that I think we're better off this way okay this is the piece we will use as a lid we'll probably turn the lid from this side to get a little bit a little bit of coloration inside of it and not from the center okay we'll save this for later and stared at imperfections I will not be I cannot be don't want to be yours you whisper tenderly in my ear I will not say I'm just disappointed just wanted to show you for a second there the type of shavings I'm I'm working with now as you can see tiny tiny flaky angel hair it's not dust it's cobweb thin shavings it's really really really fine shavings and the AC works exactly as intended I'm going to take this down a little bit more okay I'm going to apply pressure on the center so it will be level when I close it and if you let me show you just a second before I close it I did leave a small and small shoulders here so it will be flush against the lip of the jaws let me just clean a little bit the jaws from dust I'm sorry let me clean the jaws from dust a little bit okay and again pressure on the center so it will be level and I'm not going to apply a lot of force this is spalted wood after all so I'm just looking for a good grip and not compress it too much make sure that it's the next day yesterday I finished sanding the outside of this vessel I've sanded it down to 600 and I will give it the the paste abrasive wax treatment later I want to do it now because I still have the bottom of the vessel to to finish out once I'm done with the hollowing which is what comes next and it's probably the part I'm most scared of I'm sure someone like Sam from the Wyoming Woodturner looks at something like this and says okay that's like 20 minutes work and then 10 minutes to give it the finish and and complete something completely amazing but for someone like me this is a scary adventure I'm going into done this thing is hollow I'm so happy I hope you can hear it in my voice but this is such a relief to hollow this out without well with just one incident okay at this point once everything is done and sanded smooth inside and outside before I'm going to flip this vessel around and mount it to finish the back end I'm going to apply finish to the to the ring of mahogany because once this is turned out the other way around the ring is not accessible anymore and once I remove the tenon I don't have any way to mount this well I might create a I can create some friction chuck and other things but it will be much easier for me to just apply the finish on the mahogany ring now and once this is turned around the entire body is accessible without any problems to the finish so we'll do the ring first then we'll flip it around and do the body obviously we'll do the body after I will refine the and take out the tenon and also create a small mortise for my turned foot if you remember it I think you can plainly see this is more than enough that's just lovely okay this part's done and over with let's remove this and let's turn this tool around this tool this vessel around let me show it to you a little bit closer that is a nice finish on this mahogany look at that okay right all fun and games now I'm going to mount this lightly and gently the other way around the jaws are gonna go inside and this ring will rest against the shoulder of the jaws I'm going to use a paper towel so I won't I won't scratch the finish it's already on it okay so lightly pressure and now I'm going to open up the jaws very gently I don't want to apply a lot of pressure just enough pressure to hold this without without marking it I don't I don't want to break the ring with the pressure from the inside let me tear up some of the paper a little bit too much of it's tore out but I guess it's okay let's see how this turns maybe it won't have to take Yeah, you say, all things at the right times You say, all things at the right times The lid, obviously I forgot that we need to drill the hole This is going to have to go back But just for our viewing pleasure, we're going to see how this fits I think this is quite nice, it pops out We are at the final stretch of our project This is another piece of bog oak And hopefully this will become a finial to top our vessel So we're going to start off by rounding this up And then we'll remove the tailstock Make sure it all runs through And we'll start shaping the finial Well, I had to stop there for a minute Because my battery ran out So while it was recharging, I took a look at what I've done here And I decided that the base was a little bit too large for my taste And for the shape of the lid So I took it down a little bit, a few millimeters, just to make it smaller Now I will create the tenon that will slide into the hole that we've made in the lid And I already took the measurement here So, to recap, we have the foot of our vessel We have our actual vessel Let me recap again The foot of our vessel from bog oak We have spalted beech as the vessel And we have a mahogany rim And to go with that, we have a spalted beech lid Topped by a bog oak finial So a couple of drops of CA glue should do the trick I'll give it some pressure And set this aside And give it the same treatment A couple of drops And over here Spread it around And give it a shake And presto I think it will be safe now to assemble all of it together Very carefully I know you don't get to see much from the top view But this is the vessel from the top I can switch you now to our presentation angle The journey has come to an end If that's too dramatic I'm happy to present to you The bog oak spalted beech mahogany lidded vessel My very first successful lidded vessel Inspired by Cindy Drozda Not as pretty as hers, obviously But I think it is not a bad effort Let me give you another angle Thank you very much for joining me for this project I hope to see you again soon in my shop