It's June, 2018, and I am just finished the 2016 page, so now on to 2017. This site is getting pretty big, and I find it hard to believe that there is soon going to be 21 years of work on display. Please keep in mind that not everything I do is shown here. Not even half, the larger pieces mostly.

I did a couple of different things in 2017, mainly having gotten into hand chasing threads. A lot of stuff is similar to work I have done before but each piece is still unique and one of a kind. No two are the same. Enjoy whatever you wish, and I hope you learn something and appreciate the beauty of the wood.

As usual, I love hearing from you, so feel free to let me know you were here.

This was a difficult piece to make, probably one of the most difficult I have ever done. Looks simple - was not. The walnut was brought from Pennsylvania by a member of our club. I bought several and hauled two down to the park in Texas to turn. There, Susan told me she had a bunch of black walnuts at home in Iowa, and she could bring some back for me when they went back for Christmas. The two separate pieces were turned round, the bottom hollowed, the top piece had a disk cut out of it (which later became a dish) and then the top piece was divided so the upper thin ring was separated from it. The feature ring was divided into 12 separate sections. Each section was drilled with a Forstner bit - not all the way through - leaving about 1/8" at the bottom. Then, the pieces were beveled to the correct angle, using a table saw sled I made to get the correct angles. Half of the pieces had a thin piece of wenge glued to the ends. The walnuts were sliced on the band saw, using a special jig I made to hold them. After the walnut meat was removed, the shells were lightly glued into the holes, and then the holes filled with casting resin. The most difficult part is placing the shells precisely so that when they are turned they are oriented properly. Look at the photo, and you see the shell pattern is horizontal on the outside and vertical on the inside. Turn the shell a milimeter too far and the orientation will change. That is why they had to be exact. After the ring was glued together, it was flattened and glued to the bottom of the bowl, then turned flat on the lathe, and the upper ring glued in place. The bowl could then be completed as usual. It is about 11" in diameter.

This is a rack of bottle stoppers that I use for display purposes. The bottle stoppers make a nice gift when people come to the house, and are a good way to use up smaller pieces of wood. Plus they challenge the creativity of the turner to devise a variety of shapes and forms. The rack is made of bent cherry wood on a textured and dyed base of walnut. It is about 18" long. The woods, as best I can remember, from the left are, buckeye, big leaf maple burl, Manitoba maple, mahogany, ironwood, bubinga and cocobolo. The bottle stoppers are wonderful. Not for long term storage of wine, but designed to give a nice top to a bottle that is open at the table. They will stay in place if the bottle is upset, and you will note that the bottom end is flat so it can sit upright on the table. They are tapered with O rings to fit a variety of bottles. They come from the website of Ruth Niles.

A couple of close up shots of the bottle stoppers. The photo on the left shows stoppers (l to r) of African ebony, walnut, thuya burl, walnut and Texas ebony. The three stoppers on the right are the same ones, only closer. Thuya, walnut and Texas ebony. Overall, these are between 3 and 4 inches tall. The stoppers can be taken off the wood and put in the dishwasher, if one wants. The wood is simply threaded on to the stopper. They're around 4 to 5 inches tall. Finished with Danish Oil and the base with Krylon matte spray finish.

Texas ebony is almost a weed tree in lower Texas, but I think it is greatly underrated and unappreciated. I absolutely love this hard, difficult wood with its variety in color and the beautiful contrast of the light and dark wood. It is exceptionally hard, and is a black mess to work with that gets into every crevice of the workshop. But this piece was chainsawed off a log and was not thick enough to turn. Right away I saw the shape of the Province of Manitoba in the piece. Since I had the kit for a cheese cutter, I thought, "why not" and made this. I hope it finds a good home with someone who not only loves Manitoba but loves the color of this as well.

This is a large Manitoba maple salad bowl, about 16 inch diameter, but it had a split in it. I decided to use pewas (dovetails), rather than to just fill the crack and hope it holds together. The pewas provide a lot of strength and the crack will never come apart. A little bit of design opportunity, perhaps somewhat over the top, but I decided to use something called Diamondwood to make the dovetails. Personally, I do not like them, but once they are glued in place one cannot change them. The piece did not last long at the craft sale, though. Someone liked it.

I told you, at the opener of this page, that I had started to experiment with hand chased threading. Hand chasing threads is a learned art which requires perfect timing and rhythm with a notched tool to create clean and straight threads. And it is fun to do with the right kinds of wood. The top left is a little, 3" tall, box of butternut. Butternut is not a canditate for threading as it is soft and weak. Boxwood is one of the finest woods to use for threading, so I used boxwood as an insert and threaded that. The walnut lid was threaded, with some difficulty as walnut is soft, too, but I hardened the wood with CA glue several times while I threaded it. The top right photo shows the lid open. The bottom left is a box made of boxwood and cocobolo. These boxes are very difficult to pull off. Notice that the box inside is light colored boxwood. The dark outside is a cocobolo sleeve turned about as thin as veneer and then slipped over the core of boxwood. Then the boxwood is threaded, and the foot glued in place to hold it all together. The top is of cocobolo, which threaded nicely, and a cap of boxwood on top of that. The bottom right photo shows the piece opened up. It is about 4.5" tall.

Now, this is a wild one. I had turned this large ash bowl, about 17" diameter, a long time ago when the wood was wet. Even though it was coated with log end sealer, it still cracked very badly, and very unsightly. Four large cracks and I threw the thing into the corner and forgot about. After this experience I found, in our climate, the best way to treat ash is to coat it and also put it into a paper bag. I then keep this package outside on a shelf in the garage for a year. Then I bring the piece in, put in on the lathe and true up the tenon on it. At this point it will have dried into an oval shape, so I turn it round and turn all the wax off it. After this, it sits on a shelf in the shop for a month or two more before I true it up again. Then I let it sit for a few weeks more before finish turning it to final thickness. By now it is dry enough so it will not move any more. That's what works for me in Manitoba, as I have not had any serious cracks in ash since I started doing this. The double treatment, sealer and bagging, works for me. Before final turning, I went crazy with pewas, all different shapes and sizes. Some rounded corners, some sharp corners and some straight. There are about 20. I thought the bowl was going to be trashed anyway, so practice on it. When I finished all that, Karen thought it would be really different if I finished it. I did, and it was the first piece that sold at the Crafters sale at the Art Gallery.

		I know, pens are pens, and for the most part they all look alike. There is a huge variety of pens and pen kits. Some of them can be very complicated, and some are downright beautiful. I love turning the fountain pen kits, but they can be very expensive and it is difficult to recover the cost of making one. But, I still do some, and at demonstrations and family gatherings it is nice to have one for a gift or two. The top one is a twist ballpoint pen with bubinga. The middle one is a cocobolo pen, called the Sierra. The Sierra is one of my favorites. It comes with a chrome finish, black finish, titanium, etc. The bottom one is another Sierra pen of ironwood. A friend gave me a small branch of wood, and he called it ironwood.

		Our local Manitoba maple, known elsewhere as box elder, is really one of the most beautiful woods, and one of the most pleasant to turn. It can smell a bit (like manure sometimes), but that seems to depend somewhat on where it grew, and how old the tree is. At any rate, it can be such colorful wood, many times with brilliant reds. And, if there is a burl it is hard to beat for beauty. It also accepts color extremely well, and is a durable and tough wood. This is a large bowl, about 16" diameter, and the wood did not show a lot of figure or character. So, I decided to add a little with the five lines at the rim, then texturing the space with a ball cutter in the Foredom. Then, I bleached the texturing. The bowl was then finished on the outside with matte spray finish to keep the colors from changing, and on the inside with Tried and True salad bowl finish. The lower photo is there to provide a close up of the texturing.

<

I told you earlier that 2017 was, sort of, the "year of the threads" for me. I have had so much fun experimenting with making threads, and after watching an Alan Beatty video on making acorn boxes I decided to try them. They are little (about 2" or 2.5" tall) and are cute. And people like them. So here are two made of boxwood with cocobolo lids. The photos to the right of both show them when open. Boxwood is a lovely wood to turn, dense and beautiful to thread. Threading works best with a dense and hard wood. And it is a nice light color that contrasts nicely with darker and more colorful wood. The cocobolo also threaded nicely, and the reddish wood has gorgeous grain. These have no finish other than being buffed.

My friend, Ken, brought me a spruce burl that he found on vacation in British Columbia. I normally avoid spruce because of sticky sap, but this burl was bone dry and looked like it had nice figure inside of it. The piece of wood was almost this shape when I got it, and after turning off the rough exterior I was struck by the lovely grain pattern on the inside. And the idea of the name came to me instantly. The carved Nike finial should give you an idea, along with the grain pattern. Especially if you are a golfer. I named this 10 inch form "Tiger". Finished with Danish oil and buffed.

		I have often stated my preference for Manitoba Maple - box elder to many. The wood is plentiful, extremely varied and fun to turn. When turned wet (green) the wood dries without a lot of cracking and warping, and finishes well. I think the light color lends itself best to a water based matte finish, like Krylon, and it bleaches beautifully. Then you get the reds, and beautiful burl. When I rough turn this wood, I seldom use any sealer or wax on it to keep it from cracking. If I think it might crack, I will put it in a paper bag and put it on a shelf in the garage. Generally, it goes straight on the shelf without a bag. This piece has some red amd some places of burl in it. The bowl is large, about 13" diameter and almost 8" deep. The second photo shows the interior of the bowl and burl figure on the bottom. The pieces is not bleached, and is finished, inside and out with water based polyurethane which is then sanded back to a matte finish.

Don Burton was a resident of the Palm Shadows park in Texas where we spent our winters. Don was a crusty sort of guy, but the gruff exterior and blunt talk disguised a heart of gold, a man who spent so much time collecting food and money for underprivileged little kids, and who loved to work with wood. One day, a rough and cracked piece of wood, with a hole drilled through it, found its way into the shop, and someone said Don had brought it in. I asked him about the piece, and he said it was left on his patio and he had no use for it. He brought it in for anyone that wanted it. With a wry grin, he said he thought I might be interested since I like weird wood, and he thought he had brought me a piece that I would not be able to resurrect. The challenge was on, and while I worked on this bone dry chunk of wood he would come and check the progress. He wondered what I was going to use to fill the cracks, and when I told him they were not going to be filled, he was amused. He watched with interest while I cut the Texas ebony dovetails on the bandsaw and then hand carved the mortises in the bowl. I made sure he was there when I put the finish on, and he was amazed at the change in color, and fascinated when I put the piece on a pedestal. Don was pleased with what I had done, and when I tried to give it to him, he refused. He said, "You are the one that brought it life, so you keep it." Don passed away last year, but this bowl is always going to be there as a reminder of him.

Meh - that's how I feel about this one. I primarily built this site as a way to show my work and to be both an inspiration and a teacher to others. Not sure I am doing either job very well, but I tried. This is Manitoba maple again, this time finished with Danish oil, which is why it has a yellowish tint. Once done, I had to try to figure out what to put on for a lid and I settled for a dyed piece cherry, and did the same with a matching foot. The handle of Manitoba maple burl - well? By now, you have concluded that I don't really like this piece. I include it here as an example of what does not work. Not a totally unacceptable piece, as many like it, but the artist is not a happy camper.

Three more little threaded acorn boxes. These are fun to do in a public demonstration, as people are fascinated about how threads can be turned by hand in wood. They do not take a lot of time to turn, and I usually use an orange wax on the inside (great smell when you open it) and simply buff the exterior with the Beall buffers and carnauba wax. I did try doing a demo for our woodturning club, using wood other than boxwood, and failed miserably. Sometimes, people can learn as much watching someone make a fool of themselves as they can by watching a master. I was embarrassed, as I cut threads easily at home, but on a small and unfamiliar lathe, not runnng true or slow enough, and using inferior wood, I made a bit of an ass of myself, much to their delight. We have a pretty close family of turners, and they had some fun at my expense. The top one is boxwood with an unknown wood for the top. The bottom left is maple with a thuya top, and the bottom right is maple with a cocobolo top. The thuya top required a great deal of hardening with CA glue to turn the threads. All of them are about 1.5" in height.

Just a set of rolling pins displayed on a special holder that I made for showing them when at a craft sale or at a demonstration. The club often does public demonstrations at markets, Arbor Day celebrations, aand various other venues, and this is a handy way to show the rolling pins in a small space. Top pin is diamondwood (layered and dyed wood) around a hard maple core, second from the top is walnut burl, then a walnut and hard maple, and at the bottom, cherry, walnut and maple. The longest one is 21" and the shortest about 18"

Same rack as the previous photo, with four different rolling pins. I told the story on the 2016 page about how the little rolling pins came into being, so there are two of them at the top here. They are about 11" long. The top one is oak, the second one is maple, cherry and walnut. The bottom two are midsize, and are made of local oak. The pins are not all the same shape, as bakers have different preferences. Some like a more domed middle, and some like them flatter. My wife far prefers these pins as they do not leave an edge mark when used, and they are easier to handle and clean than a traditional rolling pin with the handles.

		So, here's a really neat story. Fred was always hanging around the shop at the Palm Shadows park in Texas. He was an energetic and cheerful man of 95 or so, and he loved it when we had our annual fund raiser for the shop when he could sell tickets for the main draw. He was not shy about hawking the tickets, and you could hear him everywhere. I counted myself among his friends, but knew little about him. Then, Joe Beatty said to me one day, "Do you know the story of Fred?" He told me, during the dirty 30's, when there was no work to be found anywhere, Fred had travelled around the country as a yo-yo salesman. I was in disbelief. Who ever heard of a yo-yo travelling salesman? But, that's exactly what he was. So, in my Winnipeg shop I made up a yo-yo of lignum vitae, a very hard and dense wood, and put it on a yo-yo kit I bought at Lee Valley Tools. The kit was beautifully made, with delicate adjustments for the user to tune it up. I took this back to Texas with me, and went over to Fred's house. I told him I wanted him to try it out for awhle, and that I wanted to get a photo and maybe a video of him using it. A couple of days later I took these photos, and then gave him the yo-yo. The photos are self explanatory. I never heard from Fred again. The following year we went back just to sell our place and Fred was not there. I hope, wherever he is, that yo-yo holds a place in his heart.

I have often spoken of Texas Ebony, a tree that is very common in southern Texas. I had access to quite a bit of it when we were travelling to Texas for the winter. The wood is hard and brittle, and dirty to turn, but the color contrasts and beautiful finish one can get makes it a beauty to work with. The wood almost always has splits in it, so I used little ebony dovetails across the splits. This is small, only about 5" high. Finished with Danish Oil.

		This box will probably never leave our family. Karen always has first dibs on everything I do, and some of them are immediately seized and brought upstairs into the living room and placed on display. Those, I know, are not going to be for sale or give away to anyone else. When I am gone, someday, she may choose to give them away. It is of African ebony and cocobolo. These boxes are very difficult to pull off because of the construction of them. Notice that the box inside is ebony, as is the foot and the cap. The outside is a cocobolo sleeve turned about as thin as veneer and then slipped over the core of ebony. Then the box is threaded before the foot is glued in place to hold it all together. The thing is, most of the work is done before the threading, and if you screw up the threads, the piece is firewood. The cocobolo was then ringed and textured. The middle photo shows the box open with the threads visible. This box opens and closes like silk. The bottom photo shows the ebony top, which is also textured using a ball cutter in my Foredom carver. This box is about 5" tall and about 2.5" in diameter.

About 45 minutes east of Donna, Texas, there is a road that leads directly on to the beach at Boca Chica. You drive straight on to the beach and then turn south and drive all the way to where the Rio Grande River empties into the Gulf of Mexico, about 4 miles or so. The beach is literally deserted, and the driving smooth as glass on the hard, wet sand. Just a fisherman or two along the way. Just a beautiful spot, and we could let Kira off the leash and watch her dodge the waves coming in and dig in the sand. Of course, she required a bath to get the sand out when we got home. And lots of little shells, which Karen and I could not resist picking up. Had no idea why - they were just pretty, and we don't have them in Manitoba. But I was already hatching an idea. The idea turned into this piece, called "Boca Chica". Turned of Iowa walnut from Lauren Cory's farm, this piece is about 11" in diameter. The bowl is offset, as the shells go from large to small in the rim. The groove in which the shells are placed also varies in width to accomodate the different size of the shells. That meant that the bowl was turned off center much of the time. The groove, in addition to being off center and of a different width, also had to be deeper for the larger shells. That meant, on the lathe, the bowl not only was off balance, but also had a wobble to it in order to create different depths in the groove - the deepest where it was the widest and the shallowist where it was narrowist. I still can't figure out how I did the math to accomplish this, but it worked out. And, yes, what looks like coffee in the bottom is exactly that - coffee. Then the shells were tacked in place, and the casting resin poured in place over a few days to make sure that aire trapped under the shells could escape. All in all, a very difficult project.

This is the first piece I ever threaded. I practiced a bit with the toothed tool for a while in Texas, and decided to try it on a little keepsake box, or pet urn, of walnut. This piece is about 5" in diameter. The threaded lid is of cherry and dyed black. I was amazed at the result. It worked perfectly the very first time, and almost better than any time I tried it afterward. The threads spin easily, close tightly and smoothly. I thought, "well, this is a snap," and then found out that it was purely beginner's luck.

Roger Lieser had a huge piece of Norfolk Island pine and shared some of it with me. I eagerly accepted, having seen some of the beautiful translucent pine bowls being made by woodturning friends in Hawaii. This wood lacked the branch figure that is often spaced equally around the outside, although a tiny bit of it can be seen in the bottom photo. I made this 18* bowl in Texas. It is turned while the wood was wet, using a dark shop with a single light on the outside as I turned. The amount of light showing through helps to judge the thickness. It is extremely thin, about 1/8 inch, and when it was done I put it in a plastic bag with Danish Oil and left it there for about a month to make sure oil soaked completely through. Then it was taken out and allowed to dry, then put back in for a week, allowed to dry, etc. Several times repeated. Finally, it was buffed. The right hand photo shows the three little feet I carved on the bottom. It sits solidly on those feet. A light on the inside of the piece can clearly be seen through the wall.

Three separate pieces here. The first three photos are of the same piece, an 8" tall, overall, lidded vessel of Texas ebony with an ebony finial. This is a rare piece of Texas ebony with no splits or cracks. The little vessel was given a texture treatment around the opening, and the lid was inset into the box. The second photo shows it open, and the third a closer view of the texturing on the top. This one is owned by Karen. The finish is one coat of Danish oil, and then the piece was buffed with the Beall buffer and carnauba wax. Note the little patch of white sapwood left on the piece for interest. The fourth photo is of a Texas ebony bowl with a thuya lid. The two woods go well together, the dark ebony contrasting with the beautiful red burl. This box is only 4" high overall. The bottom row is a box of eucalyptus from Texas, and the lid has an inset of Manitoba caragana bush. The eucapyptus has a silky smooth finish. About 4" diameter.

"Bones"???? Why would you call a wood turned piece "Bones"? The TV show, Bones, was about a quirky and brilliant forensic anthropologist working at the FBI lab at Quantico, with her FBI agent partner. I liked the show because it was strange and quirky, and because she had the neatest stuff on her shelves in her office. One day, I decided to photograph the television screen and hung the photo of this piece on the shop wall. In the photo it was just a shadowy outline, but I liked the shape. I first turned the body and foot, and the neck separately, out of birch several years ago. Them, it sat on the bench, unfinished for a long time. I also bought some compressed walnut, which was bent and became the "ears" or handles. The compressed wood can be cut thin and tied in a knot if one wishes. Amazing stuff to work with. I made the handles, and they sat there too. I did not know how I was going to attach them. Finally, I figured it out and drilled three tiny holes to fit three snipped off brass brads and epoxied them in place. The piece is finished with matte Krylon spray, and the handles with Danish oil. The piece is about 12" tall and barely more than 1/8" thick. It is very light. The right hand photo is a 10" tall of Texas ebony, typically cracked. I used small dovetails to span the cracks, and if you look very closely at the top left of the upper rim, you can see a tiny little dovetail up there. All hand carved and put in place before finish turning. Finished with Danish oil and buffed.

This a eucalyptus vase with a threaded walnut lid. The lid is, of course, dyed black. Eucalyptus is a beautiful wood with a silky texture and gorgeous color. The wood was given to me by my friend, Roger, and the piece was turned in the shop in Texas last year, and just finished this year. It is about 9" in diameter, and finished with Danish oil and buffed.

Let's finish off 2016 with a touching story. So, here is the message I received out of the blue, and something struck me as sincere about it. I checked it out in a variety of ways, and the story was true, so I knew it was not a hoax. After speaking to the man by phone to see what he was thinking of, this is the juniper urn I was able to do on short notice. I was humbled and honored to have been asked to do this, and thought it should be shared. This little vase was made in love for a little girl. Rest in peace, little Morgan. Here is his message to me, exactly as he wrote it: Hi. I am ____. I must start out with - you put out some beautiful pieces. I am in dire need of a your skills. I am a proud man, who has a hard time with asking for help. I am stuck and am unable to find a solution of any kind. Recently my girl friend n i learned that we have a baby on the way. I was scared and excited at the same time. At 24 weeks we were referred to a specialist where we learned that our daughter have what they call a lethal anomaly. She was given a greater than 50% of passing inutero and hours to days if she made it to a live birth. On 12/31/2116 our beautiful Morgan Gabrielle was born. Mommy went through ciserian and then a life saving hysterectomy.. While family and I showered Morgan with love. We got to be with Morgan a short 10 hours before she was called home.. This has changed my life in so many ways. Some good changes and some counter productive ones too. I struggle with motivation, focus, and consistency. Not a day goes by that i don't break down n cry or have complete detour of what i should be accomplishing. I wanted to turn my own piece but am unable to put a design together nor do i have a lathe to turn on. So i am here willing to give up control to a perfect stranger. Unheared of from me til now. As Morgan rests in a generic container from the funeral home, i am haunted by my own inability to pull it together enough to honor properly. Know this. That no offense will be taken by any response you may have. And i apologize for overstepping any boundaries that I may have by reaching out to you. Thank you, good sir. You truly create some beautiful pieces...