Shortly after I finished the Turned Art Object I was approached regarding an unusual request for a commissioned project. It is a gift for person who has followed my work for some time and really likes the things I do. What makes it different is that the recipient is not the person making the request but a close friend who actually is sponsoring the commission. When I asked what they had in mind or what sort of piece was wanted the answer was surprising. It didn’t have to be big or small, functional or decorative just something that I had designed or made. Now that’s a pretty broad description and open-ended request. After some discussion with the requestor, we decided to not do a single large item but focus on several smaller items that would be functional, decorative or both. In the end we decided on a group of refrigerator magnets, a small decorative box and a lathe turned Christmas ornament.
I decided to start out with the refrigerator magnets since the turning process is pretty well worked out as I have made more than 20 of them for my wife. While the turning process is defined the turning blanks themselves are open to a variety of woods, different inlays, multiple laminations and how they may be combined. Right now, some are going to be made from one material, some are going to be from laminating different woods, some will have inlay and others will be whatever comes to me as I am making them. Going into my collection of saved small blocks the initial material pass shown in the left photo consisted of walnut, cherry, Texas ebony, bloodwood & maple. Later on, I added oak, mesquite, leopardwood and locust shown in the right photo. 
As mentioned above some of the fridge magnets will be made from laminated blanks. In the photo below the top three blocks are left over cutoffs from other projects that I have been storing for an unknown project and this is it. The pieces below them are all cutoffs from the Southwest Segment Bowl I made and I am sure they can somehow be put together to make an interesting blank, I just need to figure out how. If you want to see in detail how those pieces were made click here. In addition, I may come up with some other laminated blanks. It all depends on what strikes my fancy.
This is a blank that’s a little over an inch square and contains twelve individual pieces. I had made a few of these some time ago for fridge magnets and didn’t turn this on so will use it as a general guide for the new blank.
Three of the smaller pieces at the left in the above photo are aligned so the cherry and maple pieces alternate. The top photo shows them set in the clamping jig that will be used to keep them aligned while clamped and glued while the bottom photo shows how they are clamped to keep all the edges flush.
Here the top photo shows the glued up blank ready to be cut in half and the bottom photo gives a front and back view of what they look like cut in half ready to be glued up.
Gluing the two cut pieces together is next. They are arranged so the grain is at right angles to each other and with the maple sections up against the cherry ones as much as possible. A spring clamp provides pressure to hold them while gluing additionally a small steel square gets clamped to one part so the two pieces stay 90 degrees to each other.
Once the glue cures and the clamps are removed this is what the blank assembly looks like and as you can see there are some overhangs that need to be cut off to end up with a square turning blank. Glued together this way there are all sorts of angles and contrasting woods adjacent to each other.
Squaring up the assembly by removing the single layer overhangs is next. Since the piece is way too small to use the table saw the band saw is used. However, to cut safely a handscrew clamp is used to keep my fingers a safe distance away from the blade.
Here’s what the finished blank looks like after it was cut and the faces cleaned up with the large disk sander. Also shown are the pieces that were cut off of it.
At this point I had a good collection of rough sized blanks. Most are sized to final width and thickness but nearly all still need to be cut to final length. What’s shown here starting with at the back row - left is locust, oak, mesquite, walnut, Texas ebony, and leopardwood. In the front are the two multipiece glued blanks and on the right laying down is a piece of bloodwood. 
Since the leopardwood scrap was a bit oversize, I decided to cut the turning blank out on the diagonal. This is so the grain would also run diagonally rather than top to bottom or side to side adding some additional visual interest to the piece.
Cutting down some older laminated cutoffs to the needed fridge blank’s size is next. While too small to hand hold in the chop saw they were big enough with this setup holding them securely in place they could be safely cut on the chop saw. The bottom left piece is the one in the saw that will later get cut on its diagonal (pencil lines) with the bandsaw. The one on the right gets its first cut on the chop saw then cut to final size on the bandsaw.
Here are the two finished turning blanks. For the left blank you can see how cutting it on the diagonal makes it look different.
Next Up – Laminated Blank & Turning Process
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