Another Foray into the Wonderful World of Woodturning (not to be confused with the World of Warcraft)
April 30th, 2008 by admin
Chip decided yesterday to bravely tackle what’s called green wood turning. We have all of these wonderful trees in our yard, and when we had them trimmed the guys were kind enough to leave stacks of beautiful birch logs in the back yard (along with some ash and maybe oak, I’m not sure).
When you turn dried wood, it chips off and you (and your workspace) end up covered in chunky sawdust. Also, your gouge tends to catch on every little thing and leave stuttered gouges in the wood, which means your piece has to get smaller to correct them (the bowl in my earlier post would have been half an inch or so larger if it hadn’t been for some deep gouges). When you turn green, or wet wood, it shaves off in ribbons and literally cuts like butter, resulting in a workspace that looks like this:
It’s tons of fun to work with.
So Chip slaved away and made me a rolling pin and himself a goblet. Now we have to figure out how to dry the things without changing their shape, which rarely happens, but it’s a fun experiment. I think the all-knowing Internet says you dry wood a year for every inch of thickness, so I guess I won’t be rolling out pie crust any time soon. But how cool will it be when we can have kitchen utensils made from the wood in our own back yard?
In other news, I have been sucked in to the crack addiction that is the World of Warcraft, as has Kory. Chip wisely abstained, since he already has video games that eat away at his free time, but that hasn’t stopped me from teaming up with Eric to tear through Elwynn Forest on a killing spree. It’s tons of fun, and more stress relieving than a day at the spa. Almost.
Jennifer wrote on 05/1/08 at 12:13 pm :
Cool post! I love hearing about this as I find the whole process quite fascinating!
We got a Wii last week and we are on our way to being addicted to Mario Kart. Nerdy, but I totally don’t care!
angela wrote on 05/1/08 at 2:56 pm :
The Wii is a dangerous thing, my friend. ALL gaming machines are the devil, but I don’t mind embracing my inner geek.
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