Turned Art Object – #15 Making Winged Figure of the Republic Finial

Starting with the Winged Figure of the Republic finial I decided to work on the base.  Mostly because everything was still set up from the prototype I had just made.  The red arrow in the photo shows the base which is going to be made of Leopardwood like the bowls and is in fact the tenon cut off the base of the bowl at the start of Post 10.

The fabrication begins by using the large disk sander to sand two small flats shown by the red arrows in the left photo.  They are so the part can be securely anchored in the mortising machine’s vice.  Once clamped in place the table is adjusted left to right and front to back so the bit is centered on the reference point in the center.  That’s shown in the right photo.

With everything set up the machine is turned on and the hollow chisel with its internal bit is used to make a square hole completely through the piece.  The left photo shows the fully inserted chisel assembly and the right shows it withdrawn leaving the nice 3/8” square hole.

The prepared blank is taken to the lathe where it’s put on the holder used to make the prototype.  The holder consists of a 3/8” square shaft held in the lathe’s 4-jaw chuck.  Mounted on the shaft is a spacer/ backing plate to help keep the blank square to the lathe’s axis shown in the top left photo.  The blank is then mounted on the protruding 3/8” square shaft shown in the top right photo.  The tailstock fitted with a flat plate in the live center is then brought up tight to the blank holding it in place for turning.

Next, the blank is turned to its almost finished shape then the tailstock is pulled back and the remainder of the blank’s face is turned and sanded smooth.  Based on my evaluation of the prototype base this one is a little thinner and has a slightly sharper more defined bevel at the bottom to give a crisper shadow line.

The last step for the base is to flip it around so the face that was against the backer plate is now out.  It is this surface that will sit on top of the bowl’s lid.  As such it needs a concave surface turned to match the curvature of the lid’s top.  That’s verified by using the cutoff pattern piece from when the lid’s top was turned as a guide to match that curve.

With the base done I started on the “wings”.  They are made from a cutoff from the bowl material that gets resawn to slightly over the 3/8” final thickness using the bandsaw.  It’s then run through the thickness sander to remove the saw marks and bring to the 3/8” final thickness.  I want it to just fit into the square center hole in the base.  Not so tight that it splits the base but also with no gap where it fits into the mortise.  The pattern is traced onto this blank and the layout lines are added for the tapered part of the wings.  That’s all been done in the photo below with the red shaded areas showing what needs to be removed to form the taper.

Cutting the base tenon to width so it matches the part’s thickness is next.  I had thought this might be a problem but it turned out to be pretty easy.  It starts by rough cutting the bulk of the waste material out using the scroll saw.  The fine tuning needed to make it fit the square mortise in the base is done on the router.  The white wood piece behind the part is a backer that holds the part plumb and square to the router table’s fence.  The router bit is raised a little at a time doing frequent test fits until it just slides into place.  The dial in front of the part is a gauge that lets me know how much I raise the router bit each time an adjustment is made.  The distance between the small marks is just a little less than two thousandths of an inch so it’s easy to make very tiny adjustments.

Adding the taper to the part is done on the large disk sander.  The top photo shows the setup where an axillary piece of thin plywood is clamped to the cast iron table.  That’s because there is a gap between the iron table and the disk.  This gap is a bit wider than the finished thin end of the part and I was worried that while sanding it might get jammed between the disk and table which would ruin the part.  Using the plywood to close the gap removes that problem.  The edge of the blue tape in the bottom photo is my guide as to what gets removed.  It’s easier to see than a pencil line on the wood.  The regular masking tape on the right-side acts like a tab that makes the part easier to hold while sanding.

Creating the taper on the disk sander was easier than I expected.  A light touch and checking frequently to make sure the taper is square and parallel to the other face takes a little patience but is not hard.  Here the first side taper is 99% done with just some fine sanding needed to remove the coarse sanding scratches.  The second side follows the same steps to layout and make.

Tracing the pattern onto the piece is next followed by cutting it out on the scroll saw then sanding the edges smooth blending the outside curves together with the disk sander and the oscillating drum sander.  Because the center cut out is pretty narrow all the finish work there is done with fine files or by hand sanding.  Last is to hand sand a small radius on all the edges.  Since radius is so small I used my jeweler’s magnifying headset to clearly see what was going on.

When done here is what the finished finial looks like.  It still needs to be glued on but that will come later.  I also will need some way to keep it from sliding around while being glued on to the top.  A shallow mortise could be cut in the top but since the top is only 3/8” thick I am a little hesitant in putting one in.  The mortising machine is not a good choice because the top is not very thick.  Not sure what I will use yet so will think on it.

Next Up – Turned Finial & Finishing

Turned Art Object – #14 Spraying Lacquer, Assembly & Finial Options

With all the needed items for spraying out, measured, mixed and ready to go I can almost get started with spraying.  First though is to thoroughly clean all the parts.  This starts by going outside the shop and using compressed air to blow the dust from the pores.  It’s done outside since I don’t want to stir up dust in the spraying area.  Once that’s done the pieces get wiped down one last time with a tack cloth to get any residual dust off.  They are then set on their stands or holders and staged for spraying.  Here is the spray area.  There is cardboard that has been wiped down to get rid of dust then laid down on the workbench to protect it.  A light gets set up so I can catch the wet lacquer’s reflection to gauge the application rate.  In the center is a lazy susan so the pieces can be spun around as needed.  Last on the right side is the air brush on its stand along with the air filter and pressure regulator that’s clamped in the vice.

Once sprayed the pieces are moved out of the way to a remote place in the shop so they don’t get any overspray on them and left to dry.  When it’s warm, I can do a couple of coats a day or sometimes three coats but in cooler weather like now I let them cure overnight.  In any case once the lacquer has cured a bit the finish gets evaluated.  If it’s the first coat most of the time 400 grit sandpaper or a wet sanding with an 1,800 grit pad is used to get rid of any dust or rough overspray.  That’s followed by a damp wipe down and drying to get rid of any residual dust and once dry the piece is given a second coat.  The second coat is wet sanded with a 2,400 grit mostly to remove any dust.  The third coat is then sprayed on and if necessary, wet sanded with either an 8,000 or 12,000 pad.  If the piece is going to get hard use, then a couple more coats get sprayed on but this project is not going to be subjected to much wear and tear so as long as the third coat looks good that’s plenty.

Those with sharp eyes may wonder what the funny looking thing is in the upper left corner of the lacquered pieces photo above.  That’s not part of this project but a tap I use to put threads in special purpose fixtures that are then threaded onto the live center in the tail stock.  Its handle had been turned some time ago but never had a finish put on it and now is a good time to do that.  The greyed-out part at the bottom of the tap in the right photo is only to hold the tap and handle for finishing.

With everything except for the lid and finial done assembly is the next step.  First, the cherry dowel joining the body to the base gets glued in to the body.  To apply the glue a drop is put in the pink tray and the toothpick is used to lightly coat the hole.  The two red arrows in the top photo point to the dowel and the hole it goes into.  The glue goes in the hole rather than on the dowel since if applied to the dowel when it is pressed in the hole any excess glue would end up where the dowel meets the body.  If the glue is put in the hole then any excess glue ends up at the bottom of the hole and no cleanup is required.  The bottom photo shows the dowel glued in place.

The same process is used where the dowel goes into the base and this is the completed joint.

Gluing the bowl to the body follows the same process except the dowel is made from oak and has had the center part that will be exposed dyed with India ink then lacquered.  The top photo shows the undyed and unfinished gluing surfaces of the dowel.  If you look close at the top of the dowel there is a small “A” since the dowels are individually cut to length for each of the two pieces being made.  The bottom photo shows the bowl glued in place with two spacers being used to set the gap between the bowl and the body.  They get removed once the glue sets.

As the project has progressed, I have been doing various studies to see what I want to put on the top as a finial which will also act as a handle to remove the lid.  Here are eight different options I have come up with.  So far, I have gone to a lot of effort to make the pieces identical but now am seriously considering putting a different finial on each one.  The first group to be discarded was the three white ones.  Next to go was the tall one at the top left that was in the original drawing.  It just seemed to be too tall and a bit overpowering when the piece was viewed in real life.  The round ball top one in the lower right was next as it looked like a golf ball on a tee.  That left the three at the top right.

As the piece has an art deco vibe I remembered a photo, on the left, I had taken at Hoover Dam called “Winged Figure of the Republic” and used the wings from it as a  starting point.  The first pattern is shown on the left but when it was done, I was concerned that the area between the red arrows was a potential weak point due to the grain orientation.  A slight thickening of that dimension was used for the right pattern which is what will be used for the final finial.

Here are the three different prototype finials set on top of the bowls.  The bowl tops are still the natural oak and have not yet had the India ink applied but they will get it ending up black like the other accents.  This does give an idea of what they look like though.

After much consideration these are the two different finials that will be made.  One thing that does not show up well in the photos is the left one based on the Winged Figure of the Republic is that it tapers from the 3/8” wide at bottom of the wings to 3/16” thick at the top of the wings.

Next Up – Making Winged Figure of the Republic Finial

Turned Art Object – #13 Making & Attaching the Caps

With the bevels made on the cap blanks the pattern is used to lay the four caps on them.  Only wrinkle here is due to the bevel only one side of the pattern can be traced at a time.  After the first side is done the pattern is rocked on the center line so it lays flat on the second bevel being careful to make sure the pattern does not shift so the other side can be traced.

The caps get cut out using the scroll saw just like the pattern.  Here is the scroll saw along with what the blank looks like after one of the caps are cut out.

That’s followed by using the big disk sander to clean up the edges and blend all the curves together.  The bottom photo shows that the scroll saw left a pretty good edge although it does not follow the line exactly.  Now I could have spent more time cutting close to the line but I would still have to finish cleaning up the cut on the sander blending the curves and it’s just easier to cut close to the line and smooth the edges with the sander.

Below the photo on the left shows what a cap looks like before sanding and the on the right is after.

Next the edges of the caps get a small radius hand sanded on them to make the edge look softer, thinner and to continue the general roundness of the piece.  Since the caps are too thin to use any power tools the edge has to be put on by hand using something like small detail files or sandpaper.  Some testing led me to use sandpaper rather than files or a scraper.  The edge work starts using 80 grit sandpaper to rough out the shape, followed by 120 grit paper to refine the edge and finishing up with 220 grit paper.  The top photo shows a completed cap and the bottom photo shows the caps just set in place.

Applying the first coat of India ink is next.  The top photo shows everything ready to go and the bottom shows the finished first coat.  There are some white specs that are pores in the oak that did not get dyed but that’s normal and will get touched up.

The next day all the black pieces get the odd white specks touched up.  Additionally, the center part of the oak dowels that are exposed when the bowl and the body are connected get a coat too.  They are in the lower left next to the India ink bottle and have the ends wrapped with blue masking tape.  This is to limit the ink and lacquer application so there is bare wood available for gluing.

While I was working on the dowels there are a couple of finishing touches.  The top photo shows a small hole in the end of the dowel and that’s to provide a little space for any extra glue to go to when the pieces are assembled.  The bottom photo shows two end cuts made on the scroll saw to allow a path for the glue to escape to the center hole.

Next is to start gluing the caps onto the body.  Because when installing the caps there is little or no room for error since if the small overhang is not just right it’s going to be very apparent.  Also, when applied the glue acts like a lubricant and pieces can easily slide out of position during clamping.  To keep this from happening I tested four ways using scraps to keep the caps in place while the glue dries.  

• I started by trying to use the pneumatic pin nail gun on a sample to shoot a very thin 22 gauge (.0253”) headless nail through a cap cutoff into a scrap of the body.  The problem with this is when the nail is shot in place the head is just a tiny bit below the surface which leaves a small hole in the cap.  As the cap is small to begin with the hole would be fairly obvious.  
• Using a dab of hot melt glue in the center of the cap to hold it in place until the glue cures worked better.  However, this got eliminated because of the short amount of time for adjustment before the glue cools off and the ability to make adjustments is lost.  Also, if not enough downward pressure is applied before it solidifies there can be a gap between the cap and the body.  
• Using super glue to hold the piece in place while the wood glue cures didn’t work to well.  In some testing the spot of super glue that was available wasn’t big enough to hold the pieces tightly together.  It also didn't allow much time to make adjustments before the glue set.
• What I ended up doing was to shoot two of the small pin nails part way in the body where the cap gets glued on.  The pictures below show what I mean.

Next is to very carefully to locate the cap exactly where it needs to go taking all the time needed.  Once in the right position the cap is pressed down onto the body and the pins poke reference holes in the underneath side of the cap.  The two red arrows point to those holes.

Now glue can be applied to the cap and using the locating pins in the body the cap with its holes can easily be put back in exactly the same place.  In addition, the cap won’t slide around while being clamped.  The photo shows the cap (red arrow) clamped in place.  Only one cap at a time is glued in place to eliminate any chance of it moving.

Finishing everything except for the lid and its finial, which I am still doing designs for is next.  Preparation of the shop includes blowing off the equipment, giving the floor a good cleaning.  The workbench and the places where the sprayed pieces are set to dry after spraying along with the cardboard sheets used to protect the workbench from overspray all get wiped down with a damp cloth.  A satin finish lacquer will be sprayed on and probably three coats will be needed.  This photo shows all the pieces final sanded and ready.

This is my typical assembly of items for spraying lacquer.  On the far left is the gallon can of lacquer with a smaller bottle used for mixing since it’s easier to pour out of.  Side note, the green line on the side of the can shows how full the can is.   To its right at the back is the lacquer thinner and in front of it is a small bottle for mixing.  On the right at the back is my mask with N100 filters that also remove organic and acid vapors.  In front of the mask is a bottle of lacquer that has about 25% by volume of the thinner added and is ready for use.  In front of that bottle is a smaller bottle that is attached to the air brush used to spray the lacquer onto the pieces.  Last, at the front is a pair of gloves used to protect my hands when spraying.

Next Up – Spraying Lacquer, Assembly & Finial Options

Turned Art Object – #12 Drilling Base Holes, Fitting Dowels & Making End Cap Blanks

With the four body holes drilled there are still at least four to go.  One in each of the bases and bowls that will be drilled next.  There is also may be one in each of the bowl’s tops but that will come later.   Locating the holes in the base is pretty easy.  Because the base is made from two pieces it has a glue line running down the center so I will use that for the front to back centering line.  The side to side is fairly easy in that all that’s needed is to measure from the glue line at the bottom to close to the center then without changing the caliper do the same from the other side.  If the points meet that’s the center if not the difference is split and remeasured.  It takes two or three iterations to get equal measurements and find the center.

Using the derived center point the base gets its hole drilled.  Same process is used for the other base.

Last of the major holes goes in the bottom of the bowl which already had a center point located while the bowl was clamped in the jumbo jaws and the bottom was having its final shaping done.  The photo here shows how that center point and the center finder in the drill press’s chuck are used locate the bowl.  Once in place the fence and clamps are used to lock the bowl down tight.  From there the center finder is removed, the drill bit installed in the chuck and the hole drilled.

To do a test assembly of the base, body and bowl I need two dowels.  One at each of the connection points shown by the red arrows in the top rendering.  The top arrow will be an oak dowel blackened with India ink.  The bottom arrow will be a cherry dowel since there will be tiny bit of it exposed where the pieces come together.  More on that in a bit.  The bottom photo is of the cherry dowel in the lathe ready to parted off.  The little stub at the left end of the dowel is sized to fit in the hollow part of the live center that’s on the right side of the photo.  It will be used to help center the dowel blank for the second dowel.

Here's how the pieces look so far dry fitted.  In the top photo the top oak dowel which is a little long and the lid to the bowl still needs to have India ink applied but it gives an idea of current progress.  The bottom photo is a close view of the bottom cherry dowel and shows the little bit of dowel that will be exposed. 

With all the parts completed except for the end caps and finials I decided to go back and take another look at the end caps.  When the prototypes were made in Post 8 Finish Base & End Cap Prototype the overall shape was OK but didn’t look quite right.  In reviewing them I think they are too thick and the overhang is a bit much.  Reducing the cap’s thickness is easily done by making a few more passes with the blank set in the jig through the thickness sander.  Here is the before at the top and the thinner after view on the bottom.

The cap’s overhang is also reduced.  The photo on the left shows the current cap and the center photo has a new edge drawn in at the red arrow.  After the cap was resized to the line using the large disk sander to cut away the excess material it looked better but was still a little bulky.  Redrawing a new perimeter line all around the outside a bit over 1/32” smaller followed by sanding that off ended up looking good per the right photo even though it’s hard to tell in that photo. 

Shown here the left cap is the original prototype and the right one is the new resized thinner one.  I also sanded a small radius on all the edges to go along with the curves in the rest of the piece.  These changes make the cap more in scale to the rest of the piece and is how I will make the final oak ones.

Making the blanks for the caps is next.  They were ripped on the bandsaw from a single thicker piece of oak.  These pieces were run through the thickness sander to get rid of the rough bandsaw face and brought down to the correct thickness.  Same procedure as used for other parts so no need to go through the steps again.  Just like the prototype the sized oak blank is set in the jig to bevel the top face and run through the sander.  Here everything is set up ready to go with the red triangles showing the area that will get sanded away.

The beveling process is to run the blank through the sander which takes material off the high side then flip it end for end and run it through again.  The same thing is done with the second blank then the sander is adjusted to take off a little more and the sequence repeated.  Here I am about half way done with the making the bevel.  The little red sliver on the end is what still needs to be removed from each side and the red arrows mark the current unbeveled area.  When the flat center section is gone the bevels are done.

This is what the completed bevels look like coming together in the center to a nice straight edge.  One other way I could tell they were right is the marks that were on the right side of the blank’s jig and at the back have been sanded off.  If you look at the previous photo you can see where they were.

Next Up – Making & Attaching the Caps

Turned Art Object – #11 Foot, Body & Bowl Connections Part 1

With most of the turning done I turned my attention to figuring out how to attach the foot to the main body and the main body to the bowl.  Those two connections are identified with the red arrows.  The bowl to body connection will require a spacer to center the bowl in the opening while the bottom connection between the body and the foot just set against each other.

Three different methods were tried in different test pieces made from scraps.  The first uses a simple screw run up from the foot into the body or from the inside of the bowl down through a spacer into the body.  There are two problems with this method.  Without a flat spot at the joint (red arrow) I could not get the connection tight enough to prevent the pieces from rocking back and forth with the small single point of contact between the two parts.  The bottom photo shows the minimum size of the flat spot highlighted in red required for stability and is just not acceptable for the piece.

The second method is to use a threaded piece of ¼” steel.  Holes are then drilled in each piece and threaded with a bottoming tap.  Assembly is done by screwing the two pieces onto the rod.  This worked better than the screw but there was a couple of problems.  First, there is a limit to how tight the pieces can be screwed down without stripping the threads in the wood and second was that though the assembly was stiffer it still wasn’t as rigid as I wanted so this is out.

In the third method ½” diameter holes are drilled in each piece.  A ½” diameter oak dowel is then inserted and glued in place resulting in a rigid connection with no flex.  I think this works because in both the screw and threaded rod samples the connection’s rigidity is a function of how tightly the two pieces are held together at a single point of contact where the two curved surfaces meet.  That’s why when I added a small flat on each of the pieces in the first example the joint became more rigid as the size of the flat increased.  When the ½” oak dowel is used the size of the point of contact became irrelevant since when the foot, dowel and body are glued together the dowel has to bend for any deflection to occur.  At least that’s my theory.

With a method of joining the pieces together the next step is to locate the holes and that is not a simple task on these curved pieces.  First to locate is the hole’s center inside of the body.  The side-to-side center is found by putting a square on the centerline of the opening and transferring that to the blue tape. 

To find the front to back center the piece is laid on its face then an adjustable square is used to measure the overall width.  Half that dimension locates the front to back center and the intersection (red arrow) with the side-to-side pencil line is where the hole will be drilled. 

Now that I have a center point where the dowel hole will be drilled, I need to mark it in line with the center line of the body’s arc.  That requires the setup shown in the top photo.  A backer board gets clamped to the drill press fence then the piece’s body gets clamped to the board.  An electronic level (red arrow) is set on a steel rule and used to level the beveled ends of the body.  That way I know the hole will be drilled square with the body’s center line.  The center finder is run down toward the body which gets adjusted by moving the fence forward or backward and the backer board side to side until the center finder lines up with the center point on the blue tape as shown in the bottom photo.

Swapping out the center finder for the ½” Forstner bit and drilling the hole is next.  The tape is my depth gauge.  The bottom photo shows a nice clean cut through the blue tape.  It took maybe 30 seconds to actually drill the hole and probably at least an hour coming up with a way to locate the hole and setting up the drill press to make the hole then double checking to see if everything was accurate. 

Drilling the outside hole in the body is next.  Accurately locating this hole proved to be much more difficult that the inside hole.  Mostly because the outside hole is further from the center both vertically and horizontally.  The two photos below show the Rube Goldberg assembly of parts used to locate the center point of the hole.  

1. Like the inside hole a ruler is used to locate the center point.  

2. Next a combination square is clamped down so its right-side face is on the ruler’s center line.  

3. A small 90-degree triangle is used to set the combination square at 90 degrees to the ruler.  

4. The small machinist square gets clamped to the combination square so its inside face aligns with the center line of the body and is parallel to the base of the combination square.   

5. Last an electronic angle gauge is attached to the machinist square using its built-in magnets.  When it reads 90 degrees the combination square is plumb so the square’s blade is aligned with the body’s center line.  

When everything is plumb and square, I can make a line at the top of the body that gives me the side-to-side center line for the hole.  Sorry for the long-winded explanation but there’s a lot of moving pieces to accurately locate this line.

The body then gets clamped and aligned in the drill press just like when the inside holes were drilled.  Last is to set the front back so the drill bit is centered on the crown of the body.  That’s all been done in the top left photo.  The other two photos are of the drilled hole which looks symmetrical from both front and side views which is a very good thing.

To verify that the holes are really square, plumb and true an oak dowel is inserted the into the hole to see if it is vertical from both front and side views which they were and that’s a huge relief since fixing an out of alignment hole is not something I want to try and do.

Next Up – Drilling Base Holes, Fitting Dowels & Making End Cap Blanks