Share your craft projects
Make new craft buddies
Ask craft questions
Blog your craft journey
Technique for turning balls:
- Start with a rod of approximately the diameter you want for the finished ball, plus a bit.
- Turn a bead on the rod. You’re aiming for a sphere, so make it as wide as it is round, or maybe a bit wider. You can do this with a skew if you want, but other tools might be less scary.
- Part the bead off.
- Set up the cup and cup live center with the bead between them, the largest diameter facing you.
- Using a scraper, turn (mostly) air until the bead becomes round, and you just start making contact all the way around.
- Remount the bead with a different axis, again, trying to put the largest diameter facing you so it’s easy to turn it down to round.
- Lather, rinse, repeat until you’ve got something roughly spherical.
The quicker you can stop after getting to round in step 5, the less wood you’ll lose and the easier everything will be, but if you’re not comfortable turning air, practice that first.
May you have the day you deserve!
