I can hardly believe that it is now July, 2018, and I am actually starting on the 2018 pages, instead of being 2 years behind. I actually just finished the 2016 and 2017 pages, and being on a roll, I thought, "Hey - let's see if we can get a head start on 2018!" Maybe Hank Hildebrand won't bug me about staying up to date on the site.

Not much new so far, but a couple of different things. More threading, and a few more artistic pieces. You be the judge.

At this point I am going through some bad problems with an inner ear virus that has thrown my balance way off, and I have not been in the workshop for almost a month. Last year pacemaker, this year vertigo - I wonder what's in store for 2019?

No complaints, though. Although I got severely dizzy while on my way home from the gym, and after 6 hours in emergency I turned to Karen and vented, "All this crap about taking care of myself, watching what I eat, taking tumeric, drinking fish oil, not smoking, working out like a mad man at the gym three times a week, walking, running, and this still happens to me? I am pissed off !!!"

OK, enough of that. I am a very fortunate and happy man, and life is good. In truth, I live every day in complete gratitude.

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

This is a disk of walnut from Lauren Cory in Texas. We went to Texas for 3 weeks in January to get ready to move out of our place, and bring stuff back home to Canada. We sold our place after wintering for the past 6 years at Palm Shadows RV Park in Donna, Texas. Lauren had brought a load of wood for me, and I felt really bad that I would not be able to use much of it. I hope that others from the workshop would use up what I could not. I knew we were only there for a very short time, so I had not even brought my tools with me. I rough turned this wood to round, added some dovetails to the cracks and then hollowed out the halves. I brought it back home with me and finished it in my shop in Canada. This is a very large disk, 14" in diameter and turned very thin. The walls are about 3/16" thick. The challenge in making something like this is that each half is hollowed first, like a shallow bowl. Then the two halves are glued together, and the outside is turned and finished. However, you have to know exactly where the inside is when you are turning the outside. I rely on a cardboard template I make of each side after hollowing the inside part. Those have to be perfect to avoid cutting through into the inside and destroying the piece. The next challenge is the mounting of the piece. That can be almost as hard as making the disk. In this case, I made the half ring of cherry with an oil finish on it. For the base I cut a slab off a piece of rough walnut and gave it a rough textured surface with a large cutter in the Foredom grinder. The disk is mouted to the base and ring with a turned aluminum pin, and pinned at the top of the outer half ring. The entire piece is finished with Danish oil.

This is another disk, made of Manitoba Maple. Two frames down, I will show you the origins of this piece of wood. Like the previous frame, the walnut disk, this was made in two halves. The maple was turned when it was freshly cut down, and the wood was a bit punky and soft. After it dried I finished the two halves, bleached them, finished them with Krylon matte spray finish, and set the finished 12" disk aside. But now, as I said in the previous frame, the challenge was finding a creative way to display the lovely disk. I had in mind to mount it in a ring of thuya burl wood, thinking it would be a nice contrast. I even had the ring, cut from a thuya disk I had made the previous year. I found a way to mount the ring, turn it and finish it. As I was drilling the hole in bottom of the thuya ring, it shattered. Thuya is a burl wood and is not a strong wood. So, I needed to find something else. That something else was maple, and I cut the ring and dyed it with a home made mixture of fabric dyes before finishing. The base is a shaped chunk of pine, severely wire brushed for texture, dyed black and finished. The disk is mounted on a pair of turned aluminum pins, which you will see closer in the next frame, and the disk can turn on the pins. The right hand photo shows the other side of the disk.

Here is a close up of the previous piece. I wanted to show you that aluminum can be easily turned using the same wood turning tools one uses for wood. In this case, I needed an upper pin that would hold the top of the disk in place, allow it to turn, and at the same time, prevent the disk from sliding upward on the pin. So, this pin is turned in one piece, and the pin that enters the disk is of a smaller diameter than the rest of the pin, preventing the disk from sliding up. Hard to explain. But I am very pleased with the way this piece turned out.

Jim Warburton is a loyal member of our Manitoba Woodturners Club, and for the past several summers he has hosted a Saturday get together at his place at Poplar Point, about an hour out of Winnipeg. A couple of years ago, he dragged a huge chunk of Manitoba maple on to his property and told people to bring their chainsaws if they wanted some of it. As you can see from the left hand photo, I took him up on the offer and came home with several chunks of colorful and nice maple. But one piece was quite colorful, and since we had several lathes there, I chose to try out the big Cobra lathe and Jim's tools and rough turn the maple piece. That piece on the lathe, two years later, is what became the disk in the frames above. . This would be a good time to tell Jim, from our club and from myself, thank you for your generosity in opening your shop and home to us ruffians and allowing us to make a mess. We always have fun.

When I got home from Texas, I had several pieces of Texas ebony that I had turned round in the shop in Texas. Small pieces just right for small bowls. So I made this little set of six just for fun. They were not intended to be identical. They are about 4 inches in diameter, just the right size for ice cream. :))

Lauren Cory also brought me some white oak logs in Texas. They are from his farm in Iowa, and were not coated or protected after being cut from the tree, so they were badly split. Oak is prone to splitting at the best of times, and the best way to prevent it is to turn it while the wood is wet and dry the roughed out pieces slowly. I looked at the wood and wondered what I could do with it, and then realized that birds probably did not care if there was a split in the wall of their birdhouse. So I turned the little birdhouses and the conical roofs, and put locking pins in place so the roof can be removed with a half twist. The holes are drilled for chickadees. For the roof, I made little shingles of cedar, glued them in place on the roof, and then coated the whole roof with green tinted resin to make it watertight. There are three coats of epoxy.

Here are two more little boxes. The top two photos are of a thuya and boxwood threaded box. In my 2017 work I included a couple of this type of box, where the inside of the box is a different wood than the outside. That is accomplished by using, in this case, a thin sleeve of thuya, turned separately, then slipping it over the bottom of the boxwood box. This is a difficult and time intensive process, because the thuya sleeve is turned thin as veneer, barely more than a millimeter. Making it more difficult, the sleeve is tapered. Also, the lid needed to have an insert of boxwood, because thuya is just too soft to be threaded. This box is about 3.5" tall. The bottom box is made in the same way, but is not threaded. The box itself is made of walnut, and the outer sleeve is of maples burl. The natural crown of the maple burl completes the lid. About 4.5" tall. His name is Bart, by the way. Go figure.,p.

Isn't this beautiful wood? It is Schubert chokecherry, a boulevard tree planted in the thousands by the city years ago in new neighborhoods. They are beautiful, with a mixture of green and dark brown foliage, and large berries good for picking and making jam and jellies and wine. They are also dying by the thousands. Black knot fungus has infested them, and there is no cure and it spreads fast. Some of the trees being taken down are very large, but most in the 6 to 8" diameter range. This tree was bigger as the bowl is about 11". The wood is colorful, beautiful to turn, smells great, and finishes well. It can crack, as evidenced here, and in this case I filled the crack with epoxy and coffee grounds.

		Probably did not need to show you two views of both of these, but sometimes the piece takes on a whole different look from a different angle. The top piece is claro walnut, which is generally a swirly type of grain with a variance of light and dark wood. In my view, it is the best of the walnuts, and whenever I get a chance I grab some. Not sure where this piece came from, but it sure is pretty and has some burl swirl in it. The second photo shows this 9" bowl from a slightly higher angle so you can see the colors on the inside. The second bowl, the last two photos, are also claro walnut, but without the swirling figue. I turned this bowl off center. As you can see in the photo, the rim is much wider on one side than it is on the other, as is the textured ring on top of the rim. This is done by using two tenons which are turned on to the piece in the first place. The center tenon is larger and used to turn the outside of the bowl and the outside bead of the textured portion. Then, the bowl is moved on to the second and smaller tenon and the bowl is turned as well as the inside bead of the textured portion. The dificulty in doing this is mounting the second time so the bowl top runs perfectly true. It cannot wobble in the slightest, or the inner bead will not match the outer bead. This bowl is about 10" in diameter, and the second photo is, again, taken from a slightly higher angle to get a better view of the inside and the textured rim.

This threaded box is made of cocobolo and Manitoba maple. I'v stated before that these boxes are very difficult to pull off. Notice that the box inside is dark colored cocobolo while the outside is light colored maple. A maple cylinder is turned about as thin as veneer and then slipped over the core of cocobolo which has already been turned but not threaded. The piece is returned to the lathe and everything trued up, and the box is threaded. The piece is taken off, and the foot glued in place over the tenon on the bottom of the boc. After that, the lid is turned, threaded and fitted to the bottom, and the final step is to turn the top of the lid and glue it to the tenon on the top. What is treacherous is that the most finicky work, the threading, is done almost last, and there is no second chances in threading. Screw it up, and the box is ruined. The right hand view shows the box opened up and the threads are visible. This box is about 5" tall.

		The upper bowl is pine, very old pine from what looked like a beam from an old building. I got the wood when we cleared out an old shed at Ed Tabachek's place after he passed away. Joanne wanted the shed removed, and asked the club to clear it out and take it down, and those who showed up could take the wood in the shed. Old pine is dusty and hard to turn, and by nature is a rather nondescript wood. It can have a nice defined grain, but is basically a plain wood when finished. I decided to use a circular wire brush mounted on the lathe to deeply brush the outside and remove the soft wood in the grain and let the hard wood stand out. Then I dyed the 10 inch bowl on the outside and finished it with a matte spray finish. The bottom bowl is of Manitoba oak, about 13" in diameter. I turned in some concentric grooves in the bowl, burned them with a wire, then textured the space between. After texturing, I used a little tiny brush to apply some dark stain to the texture, and then finishied the bowl, as usual, with Danish oil and buffed it.P>

The piece on the left is a collaberation between myself and Jim Warburton. Jim likes to do open segmented things, and he showed up at a club meeting with a bunch of segmented rings, unfinished, and offered them to whoever wanted to take one. The catch was - you had to come back to the next club meeting with a finished piece that used the ring in it's construction. I figured I would do a hollow form, about 7" tall. I turned the form to rough shape, including the hollowing. Then, instead of just cutting it straight across and gluing the ring into the space, I cut it at about a 20 degree angle, flattened the saw cuts, and glued the ring in at an angle. After the glue dried, I finished turning it, and then gave it a little wonky cap glued up of the same woods Jim had used, and turned it at the same 20 degree angle and glued it in place. This turned out to be a nice piece, very light and thin. Thanks, Jim, for the great idea of doing these, and for giving me one of them. The right hand piece is a commission I received from a fellow who wanted a pedestral made for a 7 foot by 4 foot granite top table. He wanted it made of hard maple, which of course is virtually impossible to find in one piece. I considered getting the maple and gluing up the blank myself, but decided against it. Way to difficult to do unless one had large precision machinery to make the tight joints required. So he had it manufactured and delivered to my house. 235 pound block of maple, 36 inches tall and 16 inches square. This was a hard job, physically, and it beat me up pretty good. I have attached a series showing the turning of the piece, which you can see by clicking here. The finished piece stands at 27.25 " tall and 15.75 " in diameter.

A pair of bowls. The piece on the left is a large, 18" diameter Manitoba Maple bowl. This is an especially nice piece of wood with beautiful color and figure. The bowl has an outlined and textured band at the top which has been bleached and stands out from the rest of the piece. Like most of my Manitoba maple pieces, this has a matte finish on it to retain the natural color of the wood. I have another piece of wood, similar to this that is rough turned and will likely be posted in my 2019 work. The bowl on the right is ash, and during the drying process it cracked mercilessly. Huge cracks right across the grain in the bottom of the bowl. I was about to throw it away, and then decided I needed some practice with dovetails (or butterflies or pewas - whatever you want to call them). So I put in about 20 of them of various shapes and sizes, thinking it was one of the ugliest pieces I had ever done. Karen said, "I like it. That is really different." So I put it on the Crafted sale at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in November, and it was the first piece to sell. Go figure. The bowl is huge - fully 18" diameter and 9" deep.

The bowl on the left was created as a door prize for our annual credit union retirees golf tournament. This year it was held at the golf course in Carman, Manitoba. I decided to create a piece each year with the logo of the system we all loved, the credit union system, and give it to someone. It always seems to be appreciated, and this ash bowl, about 15" diameter, was the one for this year. The logo is pyrography, and the band is textured and slightly stained with a darker stain to set it off. The bowl on the right is a simple oak bowl, made of local oak, with a textured and stained band at the top. The oak is rather a bland wood, so the band is added for interest. About 14" diameter and 4.5" deep.

Here are some shaving kits. For years I got these kits from Lee Valley Tools, and was quite satisfied with them. But now they stopped selling the brushes, and I fail to see the point of selling the other parts of the kits without the brushes. It's not like they are hard to find, but they just stopped selling them without explanation. So I found other sources for the brush, and ended up finding far superior kits for the stands and razors, so I no longer get them from Lee Valley. They make very nice gifts, and people seem to really like them when I offer them up for sale. When I sell or give these as a gift I always provide a nice soap with it as well that I get from Jonathan at Stonefield Shaving. He sells beautiful soaps sourced mostly from Canada, and for several years now I have been making shaver handles for him. His site is really interesting and well worth visiting. The one on the top left is for my little brother Bryon. The one on the top right is for my little brother Gerald. The one on the lower left is the one I have in my own bathroom and use on a daily basis. Bryon's is made of cocobolo, Gerald's is of ebony, and mine is ironwood. The bottom right looks kinda wierd, but for reason. Here's the story. Jonathan has friend who is a cricket affictionado, with a very special connection to a cricket bat he had used for many years in the sport. When the bat finally wore out, he wanted a shaving brush and handle made out of the wood, so I tried to find a way to keep some elements of the bat intact and recognizable. One was the jute winding on the handle, and I incorporated that into the brush, dirt and all. The other was the original joint between the handle and the bat, which shows up in the shaver handle. Not really pretty, soft and difficult wood to work with, but I think he was pleased that there is no doubt this came from his beloved old bat.

Like I said in the previous panel, I make a lot of shaving kits and make some razor handles for Jonathan. The top two photos are a couple of the handles I made for him. Not sure of the woods. Then, sometimes it is just fun to make different stuff, and the bottom two photos are just that. The bottom left photo is of some wine bottle stoppers that I sometimes sell, but often just give away to people who come to our house for dinner. The stoppers are intended for an open bottle during use, and not for extended storage. But they are attractive on the table and will keep the wine in the bottle if someone upsets it. The stoppers come from Ruth Niles. Click on her name to go to her website. Then, Tony said, "can you make some Harry Potter wands for my son's girlfriend? She's a teacher and they are doing Harry Potter stuff and she wants some wands." So, the bottom right photo shows a few of the many I made. They are fun to do, good skew practice, and can be whatever you want.< P>

Two final items. The one on the left is a Manitoba spruce hollow form, simple and placed on a cocobolo pedestal with a cocobolo finial. About 12" tall overall. Someone knocked this off the table at a show and broke it. The vase on the right is one of my last pieces of Texas ebony, which is just a beautiful wood. A mess to turn, and a lot of cracks and stuff, but it finishes so nicely and has such character. This 8" vase has several pewas in it to hold it together.

To close this off, here is a shot of the lovely mesquite bowl I got from Jimmy Tolly in Texas in a WoW swap. At most of the symposiums, World of Woodturners members will get together and swap pieces, names drawn from a hat. And at Christmas time one of our members organizes a swap by mail, and this is the one I got from Jimmy. Beautiful piece, and I am so pleased to have it.