Celtic Knot – # 3 Turning 1st & 2nd Test, Gluing Inlay Blank

After the cherry and maple glue joints for the fourth cut have cured as before the maple is cut down so it is flush with the cherry.  Looking at the four faces of the blank the good news is the left edge of the maple is aligned like it’s supposed to.  The bad news is the right side is nowhere close to what was planned.

Since I have finished the four-stage glue up for the blank I might as well go ahead and turn it round to see what it looks like.  This starts by cutting off a 3 ½” long piece, finding the center with the center finder and making a small dimple (red arrow) at the center.  This will be used to locate the live center on the lathe.

After turning the blank round to ¾” diameter the finished faces look just as weird as the square blank did.  The photos below show the blank rotated a quarter of a turn in each photo.  The top photo looks the best as that’s the one from the result of the 2nd cut.  From there each one gets more and more distorted.

In looking at the ¾” turned blank I wondered what it would look like if it got turned thinner and here are the results.  There are two columns of photos below.  The left column shows the same face as it is turned down in 1/8” increments from 5/8” diameter down to ¼” diameter.  Each row is the same size with the right photo showing the face on the opposite side as the left photo.

Next is to make another test piece using the piece of inlay maple that exactly matches the width of the saw kerf explained at the end of the last post.   The process of cutting and gluing is the same as before so no need to go through that again.  Here is after the fourth and last cut where three maple pieces have been glued in place.  It looks pretty good with the maple pieces lining up like I had expected.

When the fourth and last maple piece glued in this is what the four sides of this test piece looks like.  All of the vertical joints line up and all of the diagonal pieces cross in the center of each face which is what it’s supposed to look like as compared with the first test piece shown at the top of this posting.  My original plan was to use this test piece on a slimline pen but the diameter of that style of pen is pretty small at about .3”.  In looking back at the first test piece when it was turned down to about that diameter the majority of the cherry shapes within the knot were lost.  Given that this test piece has thicker maple pieces I think that all of the cherry would be missing from the knot’s interior as would much of its detail.

This meant that I needed to come up with another use for the blank.  Looking for something to use the test piece on my wife mentioned she had a small screwdriver that’s frequently used in the kitchen not as a screwdriver but for odd jobs of prying things open and the like.  It looks similar to this.

Now that I knew what the test piece is going to be used for the blank gets cut down to the handle length plus some for chucking in the lathe.  Sequence for turning is to locate the blank’s center, mount opposite end in the scroll chuck then bring the live center to the marked center of the blank and tighten everything down.  Once that’s done the blank is turned down to ½” in diameter with a slight taper added to the blade end.

Next, a hole is drilled in the end where the screwdriver blade’s shaft will get epoxied into place.

The last bit of turning is to round the head of the handle.  This is done with a light touch so as to not break off the handle.  When done a saw is used to cut the handle free.  I don’t want to try and turn the handle completely off as it’s likely that when it breaks free there will be a little divot in the handle that would have to be addressed.

After the handle is cut off the screwdriver blade is inserted in it and the assembly is put in the drill chuck where the end of the handle gets sanded smooth.  From here all that has to be done is to spray a lacquer finish on the handle followed by epoxying the screwdriver blade in place but that’s going to be put in hold for a bit while I work on gluing the maple-katalox-maple inlay glued up. 

Getting the maple and katalox thinned down so the total of the three layers are really close to totaling .132” is next.  That’s done by setting the pieces on a carrier and running then through the thickness sander taking a little bit off with each pass.  The maple pieces are first since they are the thinnest pieces.  Below the top photo shows one of the two pieces needed brought down so they are only three hundredths of an inch thick.  That’s about as thin as I am comfortable making them at this point.  The center piece is katalox which is shown in the bottom photo.  Together the three layers total up to being about three thousandths of an inch more than the target thickness. 

Gluing the three pieces together to see what I actually end up is a little bit of a challenge because as soon as the glue is applied to the thin pieces, they start absorbing moisture from the glue and start to curl.  It’s a little like herding cats to get them all aligned, flattened and clamped in place.  The top photo is of how they are clamped together and the bottom photo is a close view of the left end.  Now it’s a matter of letting them set clamped to cure.  That’s going to take a few days as the cauls used in clamping have an impervious surface which will slow down the curing.

Next Up – Final Inlay Assembly & Pen Build