Game Piece Holder – #4 Making Thin Feature Layer & Gluing up the Blanks

Assembling the three-layer Katalox-Maple-Katalox stack to be used in the cherry bowls is next.  Here is the rendering of what that bowl looks like.

The first step is to cut the katalox and the maple to the correct size.  That’s done using the chop saw.  In the top photo the left side of the saw is set up to cut pieces to width and the right side is for trimming the katalox to establish a straight square edge.  Cutting that straight, square edge is first.  Because the katalox is so thin I am concerned that when the saw blade starts cutting it could crack or worst case shatter the thin piece.  To prevent that thicker layers above and below the katalox will reinforce it.  On the right you can see the three layers identified by the red arrows.  The left most one is a base layer, the middle is the katalox and the right is the top layer.  To use, all three layers are aligned to the left so the katalox is supported above and below as shown in the bottom photo.  The cut is made giving me a nice splinter free straight and square edge as in the bottom photo.

With a good edge the piece of katalox gets set on the base on the left side, a top layer added and the cut is made trimming the katalox to length.  That’s followed by turning the piece 90 degrees and trimming it to width so the piece is square.  The process is repeated for the two more katalox layers and the maple layer per bowl.  The katalox piece on the right side of the saw is one of the finished pieces.

Gluing the three layers together is next.  The method is the same as when I glued up the cedar test block early on.  The left photo shows the cedar test piece where the large red clamps align the edges of all the layers and the grey ones provide the vertical clamping force to hold the layers together.  The right photo shows the final clamping of the katalox and maple layers with the glue cleaned up.  A couple of things need to explained regarding this stack.  Only the two katalox and center maple layer are glued together.  The thick top and bottom layers are not glued on but are there to act as flat platens so the three glued layers stay flat and true.  When glue is applied to the thin wood layers, they absorb the moisture from the glue causing them to warp.  The thick pieces help with aligning the thin layers when the red clamps are added along with keeping the layers flat while the glue cures.

After the 3-layer feature piece has cured overnight I moved on to cutting all the layers of the four different woods for the large bowl.  Only the walnut is thick enough to make the whole bowl out of one piece.  The maple had three layers, the oak two and the cherry because of the integral katalox and maple feature layers ended up with seven layers.  All of the bowl blanks are made a little tall and will be trimmed during the turning process on the lathe.  The top and bottom cherry layers will be made oversized and trimmed later but because the center layer is sandwiched between the feature layers it has to be cut the final size before the stack is glued together.  My drawing say that layer is 1.441” thick for the large bowl so I ripped the 5 ½” square blank down slightly thick on the bandsaw then using the thickness sander crept up on the required thickness.  As the bottom photo shows it’s 1½ thousands thick which is thinner than a sheet of paper so that’s OK.

Gluing the stacks together for the walnut, oak and maple follows the same process as when I glued the prototype cedar bowl.  However, trying to glue up all the layers in the cherry at once gave me a little pause as I was concerned that I could get outside the glue’s working time before the glue got applied, the layers stacked, aligned and clamped.  To get around this the glueup will be done in two steps.  First the bottom three layers get glued together and the top two layers get glued together then the whole group is clamped.  Not applying glue between the center thick piece of cherry and the three-layer feature strip and leaving the sacrificial base off saves me enough time in glue application, alignment and cleanup that I am comfortable proceeding.

Here are the walnut, maple, oak and cherry glueups done and clamped.  All have the sacrificial base except for the cherry.  Tomorrow it will get added along with gluing the two subassemblies of the bowl together.

This photo shows the four large bowl blanks ready to start the turning process.  Assembling the medium and small bowl blanks follow the same process albeit with smaller pieces.

All went well making the medium and small bowl blanks with one exception.  When I cut the oak pieces for the small bowl to size some internal cracks showed up.  They are outlined by the red boxes but all except one are small and are located near the edges.  I think that when the square blank is cut round all those near the edges will be removed.  The last one is really tiny and while not at the edge is in the area that gets narrowed down toward the base so it may get cut away too.  I won’t know for sure until I start working on it in the lathe.  If more show up or they get bigger when I start turning then it may require making another blank.

I did have one extra step in making the small cherry bowl’s middle cherry piece which needs to be .86” thick.  After bandsawing it close to thickness it needed to be run through the thickness sander to get it to the right size and make the faces parallel.  Problem is it’s too short to run through safely so two rails were glued to either side shown in the bottom photo.  With them in place the sander reads the assembly as one long piece and could be safely run through the machine.  Once the thickness is achieved they get cut off.

Here are all twelve of the blanks cut, glued and ready to start the turning process.

Next Up – Bandsawing Blanks, Centering Blank in Lathe & Turning Outside Face

Game Piece Holder – #3 Sacrificial Bases, Walnut & Cherry Blanks plus Making Veneer

With the designs pretty well set yet always subject to change it’s time to start making some sawdust.  My plan is to make the bowls out of one piece whenever I can because I want to eliminate, hide or minimize any glue joints.  However, that’s not always possible given the thickness of material I have and what’s available here.  In some instances, the joints can be hidden behind the decorative bands or inlays.  In others I will have to rely on careful grain matching to make them as inconspicuous as possible.  This means that the bottom layer in the turning block where the 4-jaw attaches needs to be sacrificial to preserve as much of the bowl material as possible.  Since I wanted something more substantial than a softwood, I raided my scrap box pulling out all sorts of different sizes and types of hardwood.  They then got sorted into common lengths and thickness and glued up to get the various widths required.  Here they are all glued and clamped together.  In the background you can see some of the material selected for the bowls.

Since I didn’t spend a lot of time making sure all the joints were exactly flush during the glue up there was more variation than normal but it’s not a problem.  That’s because it’s more time effective to just run the glued up the blanks through the thickness sander to bring all the joints flat and level.  To speed the process the normal finer grit, wrap in the sander gets removed and a coarse 60 grit wrap is installed.  For those that don’t know 60 grit is like a playground sand.  Below is a photo of a six-inch ruler with 220 grit paper above it and 60 grit below.

Once sanded here is what the blanks look like with how many and what size bowls get cut from each written on them.

The first set of blanks to be made are out of walnut.  The top photo is a rough sawn plank almost 4” thick that’s a little cupped, warped and twisted.  I cut down the tree about 45 years ago, had it sawed into planks and it has been drying ever since.  First step is to cut it into a couple of more manageable sections.  From there it gets loaded into my Planer Sled, leveled then run through the surface planer to flatten (bottom photo).

The cleaned-up planks are shown in the top photo.  The part to the right of the white line in the top plank is what will be used to make the bowl blanks.  That’s shown in the bottom photo with the oversized templates for the bowl blank shown.

Working on the cherry blanks are next.  Pulling out my thick cherry slab left over from the Maloof Rocker project and using the bowl templates I marked the size piece needed then cut it out on the bandsaw.  Because the layers of contrasting woods in the bottom photo are not inlays but go all the way through the piece, I will need to define the thickness of the layers then use that to determine the thickness of the cherry blank layers. 

The first step in making the feature layers for the cherry bowls is to rip the Maple and Katalox that make up the feature layers into thin strips.  First is the maple and here is the setup for ripping the blank on the bandsaw into four pieces just a little over 1/8” thick.  Process is to rip a piece off then run the remaining thick piece through the thickness sander until all the bandsaw marks are gone and the blank has a smooth face.  Another piece gets ripped off and the sequence gets repeated.

The same process is repeated with the Katalox except the pieces being ripped are thinner at 3/32” thick. When sanded smooth this gives pieces just under 1/16” thick at .058” shown at the top with the maple sheets in the lower left.  Next is to stack the cherry, katalox and maple to see if the layers look in proportion.  They didn’t, the maple looked too thick so I ran it through the thickness sander shaving off about 1/100 of an inch then restacking the pieces and evaluating to see what it looked like.  The lower right photo is the result with the maple piece at .084” thick giving me a total layer thickness of .2 inches.

Because the piece of katalox is not wide enough to make the layers multiple pieces need to be edge glued to get the required width.  With them being so thin I was worried about splintering when run through the table saw.  To prevent that from happening they get taped down to a sacrificial backer board per the left photo and cut to width.  Gluing thin pieces presents its own challenges since when trying to clamp the pieces just buckle.  That’s solved by taking the three pieces needed and setting one tight to a backer clamped to the non-stick surface laminated particle board shown in the top right photo.  In the bottom right photo, a second backer is lightly clamped down leaving a little space between the katalox and the second backer.

After a very thin bead of glue is applied to the edges of the katalox the pieces are set between the backer boards and lightly clamped together.  Since one of the backer pieces is also lightly clamped in place it is movable.

Last is to add another piece of laminated particle board, clamp it down snuggly to hold the katalox pieces flat then tighten the clamps that were lightly clamped in the previous step and leave it for the glue to cure until the next day.

When the piece is unclamped the joints, all looked good but there had been some glue squeeze out from the vertical clamping.  You can see the shine of the glue in the left photo.  It’s pretty easy to remove using a card scraper followed by a little sanding.  The right photo shows the majority done except for a little at the bottom between the clamps which will get done when I reverse the piece.

Next Up – Making Thin Feature Layer & Gluing up the Blanks

Game Piece Holder – #2 Finish Turning Prototype & Different Feature Accents

With the outside of the bowl turned to its final shape it’s time to start on the inside.  This starts by taking the blank out of the lathe and flipping it end for end so the base is now at the headstock end.  I didn’t mention the scored line near the bottom before but that’s where the bottom of the bowl will be.

Marking the bowls ¼” wall thickness is next to give me a starting guide.  Also, a hole is drilled just short of the depth I need to hollow out to.  Since I had the Fostner bit already in the chuck that’s what got used.

Here the bowl is a bit over half turned.  The red arrow points to a pencil line partway down the inside of the bowl.  That’s my reference mark showing from there to the lip of the bowl is the correct thickness with everything on down too thick.  From here it’s removing material and checking the wall thickness along with the depth until done.

Once the interior of the bowl is turned to size it gets sanded then removed from the 4-jaw chuck and the jaws get changed out once again.  This time a set of Jumbo jaws get installed and the bowl gets mounted top edge in.  As the bowl’s walls are only ¼” thick the jaws get lightly tightened down to prevent the walls from being damaged.  To provide some stability the tail stock gets a live center brought up and a little pressure applied to hold the bowl in place.  Now I can clean up most of the base then cut the foot off.

Last is to finish turning and cleaning the base up.  Here on the top left is after the foot was cut off and on the top right is the finished base.  The bottom two images show different views of the bowl.

With an actual mid-size bowl done I measured its real volume which was 1 cup with the calculated volume of .953 cups, close enough for our purposes.   The drawing below shows the comparison between all three different sizes that I will be making.

With the woods selected, the prototype finished along with the overall shape and stepped sizes set it’s time to do some testing of the various types of feature accents we discussed.  Those include the following where each of the items are about ½” or so down from the top of the bowl:

• A copper band around the bowl.
• Six equally spaced round aluminum or brass dots inlayed into the wood.
• Six equally spaced square walnut pegs set into the wood deep enough so that when the bowl is turned, they will be visible on the inside of the bowl.
• A turquoise ban inlayed around the bowl.
• A band of brass shavings inlayed around the bowl set in a clear epoxy.

 Two other possibilities also include a feature similar to what’s at the top but at about ¼” up from the bottom of the bowl.

• A series of three grooves burned into the bowl at the top and one at the bottom.
• A feature ring consisting of three thin wood layers with the top and bottom matching and a contrasting center layer.

Now there were some early tests that got quickly discarded for one reason or another.  One example was the idea to use lead free solder to fill either square or round holes.  The photo below shows that test.  One problem was that the melting point of the solder was pretty close to the burning point of the wood and it ended up charring the edge of the holes.  Also, there was enough surface tension in the molten metal that the square corners didn’t get filled. 

Making a decision on which features to use is next.  During our discussions one was a clear choice, that of the turquoise inlay probably in oak as a nod to where we live in the Southwest.  Beyond that it was pretty open so I started with four promising possibilities.  The copper band, brass and aluminum dots and square walnut pegs.  Taking some scrap oak a block was laminated up and turned to a cylinder using the same process as the cedar prototype giving me a blank canvas to work with.  At this point a major part of the testing was to see if I could actually make what I had designed.  The brass and aluminum inlay dots had me concerned because with the bowl walls a ¼” thick I really only had 1/8” depth to work with.  Laying out the dots was the first problem since they needed to be equally spaced with the mounting hole drilled perpendicular to the center of the cylinder.  In the end this is the setup I used to accomplish that.

Cutting the dots, fastening them securely in place then bringing them flush to the wood turned out to be challenging but doable.  Both the copper band and walnut square inlays were easier than I thought.  The photo below shows the results from this first bit of testing. 

In a video call with my son, we discussed which options might look the best with which woods.  Using photos of three different woods and some time with Photoshop, I put together these possibilities.  More discussion ended up with selecting the copper/walnut for sure.  The burned lines in maple are a strong contender with the square walnut inlay and aluminum dots rejected.

Next alternates for the oak and turquoise were discussed as there were three different color mixes available with a fourth option of contrasting layers thrown in for good measure.  The choice was the top right image. 

Besides the oak choices there were eight others for the maple and cherry.  Those are shown below along with the walnut and copper version we had selected.  The cherry bowl generated the most versions and we ended up with five different possibilities.

I am not going to bore you with the discussions on how the final designs were selected but here are the final four choices.  In a curious twist the aluminum and brass options that were the most difficult to do in testing got eliminated for aesthetic reasons.

The last decision to make was regarding the spacing from the top for the various feature rings.  I thought constant spacing of the top and bottom decorative rings might look out of proportion with the different sized bowls.  To my surprise after doing some drawings the bottom inlay at the same height looked fine while the top inlay did not.  In the drawing the bowls on left have the same spacing while the bowls on the right vary by less than a tenth of an inch.  Not much but it does make a difference since it’s the details that count.

Next Up – Sacrificial Bases, Walnut & Cherry Blanks plus Making Veneer

Game Piece Holder – #1 The Start, Design & Material Selection

This project is going to start with more than the usual amount of background information regarding the design process including 3D drawings, photo renderings and some prototypes so bear with me as I explain how this project unfolded. 

Not too long ago while my wife and I were having a video call with our son I asked him if he had any ideas for a belated Christmas present.  I had asked him if he was interested in me making him something like our end grain cutting board.  He said not really as they already a cutting board that gets limited use, works just fine and might end up as a display piece.  We kicked around some things then he mentioned that as a board gamer he had looked at several different kinds of containers to hold the game’s pieces during play and hadn’t gotten anything yet.  This piqued my interest in that it was something he wanted, would be used and I could make.  We discussed various shapes including triangular, square, hexagon and round with or without a base.  I liked the idea of doing something round that could be turned on a lathe which would allow design freedom along with the ability to use a single form.  It would also allow for the ability to have different types of feature accents and he agreed with the idea.  After those intial discussions I sent him several different shapes and forms of feature accents.

Additional discussion regarding functional design requirements included the holders having gently curved interior sides so pieces are easily removed, wider that tall for same reason, stable, graduated sizes for holding different sized or different quantity of items and stackable to reduce storage requirements.  Here was an early quick 3D drawing used after the general shape had been decided on and the initial size had been increased but not finalized.

As it turned out even our revised size bowl that’s 3 ½” in diameter holding ½ a cup was too small for anything but the smallest size.  Upsizing the other containers we settled on three bowls at 3½”, 4 ¼” and 5” in diameter with proportional heights.  This will also give the ability for them to stack for storage.

By now we had decided that there would be three bowls in a set and four sets for a total of 12 bowls.  At this point I took the mid-sized bowl and did some 3D drawings showing a couple of ways they could be embellished, just to get things going. 

Next is to discuss what the bowls would be made out of as we wanted each of the four sets to be made from a different wood.  I came up with five different possibilities: cherry, oak, maple, walnut (not shown) and leopardwood.  In the end the leopardwood got dropped because that while the figure of the wood is striking it probably would be too much given that we had planned on adding some sort of feature accents to the bowls.  Also, it would have required more pieces glued together to get the size turning blocks needed than I wanted to see.

So far all we have had to work with is flat 2D drawings and some 3D renderings.  To get a better idea of what the actual piece would look and feel like I decided to make a middle size bowl out of cedar.  This is the same material as used to make the prototype of the just completed Wastebasket.  Since the raw piece to be used is rough sawn and has a bit of a twist the blank gets cut into smaller pieces (top photo) then the low corners get shimmed until the blank sets flat (bottom left).  From there it gets run through the thickness sander until the surface is flat and smooth.  The bottom right photo shows this in progress where the high corners have been knocked off.

The top photo shows what a finished piece looks like and the bottom photo shows the layers cut to size and ready to be glued together.

Gluing the pieces into a block is next.  Here the large red clamps hold the stacked pieces in alignment while the grey clamps apply the downward clamping pressure to the glue joints.  I might have used a little bit too much glue on the joints.  After a few minutes to give the glue a chance to “grab” the large red clamps are removed and the excess glue cleaned off.

Next is to make a template for the middle-sized bowl which is the bottom one in the top left drawing.  At the top right is after I cut it out using a jig saw.  The bottom left is the oscillating drum sander ready to begin fine tuning the template.  This drum will take care of most of the cleanup but as I need to get into tighter radiuses the drum gets swapped out with smaller and smaller ones.  The fine cleanup is done with fine files and sandpaper ending up with the template at the right bottom.

After the glue cures overnight, the center is located and an oversized circle is drawn with a compass then cut out using the bandsaw.  Mounting the block in the lathe is next.  First the drive center gets a good whack with a mallet leaving tooth marks in the block which will provide a good grip for turning.

Here the piece has been mounted in the lathe with the drive center on the left and the live center which freely spins around on the right.  Turning the block round to an even diameter cylinder is next.  A nice sharp turning tool generates the wispy shavings shown.  If you are not getting those then the tool is not sharp enough.

To drill a centered mounting hole in the blank I will use my 4-jaw chuck to hold the piece with the center line of the blank aligned with the lathe’s axis.  For various sized pieces I have four different sized jaw sets.  Here three are shown and I will use the largest of them.

In the top photo the blank has been secured in the 4-jaw chuck using the live center to align the center of that face with the lathe’s axis.  The bottom photo shows the live center replaced with a Jacobs chuck and a Fostner bit so a mounting hole can be drilled.  In this method of drilling the blank spins and the bit does not move.

With the mounting hole drilled the blank is removed, the chuck’s jaws get swapped out for the smallest set, the blank reversed with the newly drilled hole mounted over the jaws.  They are then expanded to hold the blank in place and the exterior can be turned to shape.  This photo shows the blank rough turned.

Turning continues until the blank fits in the template.  Part way through I found that a half template worked a lot better than a full one.  After going through making the prototype I also found that swapping the chuck’s jaws is not the fastest method to set up the mounting since swapping out the jaws takes some time.  With 12 of these to turn I want to streamline the process where possible.  When I get to the actual bowls I will go through the revised mounting process.

Next Up – Finish Turning Prototype & Different Feature Accents