This is a vase I turned from a chunk of Bradford Pear. I wanted to try a round-bottomed vase, without thinking about how I would hold it upright once it had something in it.
One of the things that went right with this was deciding to do most of the carving on the vase while it was still in the chuck. It’s a lot easier to work with a piece that’s held well. Who knew? Also, I had at least one bit of carving I wasn’t happy with, so I just threw it back on the lathe and took it away with a skew. Easier than an eraser!
Turning the vase went pretty well. And once I had it turned I had the idea of having a sort of halo holding up the vase. Then, thinking about how I'd hold the halo, I came up with the current design, using some sticks through a halo, cradling the vase.
So I got busy and mounted a hexagon of live oak on a sacrificial face plate, and turned a wooden donut on the lathe.
Then I drilled holes for the legs, and used the offcuts to make three live-oak legs, which I painted black and finished, then glued into the wooden donut, then finished that with some spray-lacquer.
I placed the base against the vase and pencil-marked where the legs hit. I drilled shallow holes with a spoon bit and slightly rounded the tops of the legs to match. Not a perfect match, but close enough. I also rubbed the base on a piece of 60 grit sandpaper to flatten the bottom of the legs.
I then finished the vase with some carving, some enamel paint, and multiple coats of spray lacquer. It's slightly more matte than I was hoping, but I think overall it's good.
Once everything was finished, I poured some black-tinted epoxy into the inside of the vase to make it waterproof. I really need to get an old bbq rotisserie motor one of these years so I don't have to hand-rotate a piece to get an even coating on the inside of it, but for this one, it was hand-work. Then a little more 5-minute epoxy to hold the legs and the bottom of the vase together and it was complete.
Thinking back on it, I think this is all wood that Nathan dropped off for me when he visited. Thanks, buddy!
On a personal note, I haven't been in the shop much since April. I’ve got some back problems, and was fighting the insurance companies, and then eventually had to switch insurance companies after proving that my old one had lied in their provider directory, and they didn’t actually have a single spinal surgeon in their network in New Mexico. They would have paid for me to go out of network, but then I had to prove that nobody out of state would accept them because they don’t actually pay their bills. I’ve seen this before, and they will hopefully be the third insurance company I’ve gotten kicked out of New Mexico for fraud in five years.
Anyway, I’ve got a new primary care doc (my old one went out on family leave in the middle of this), a new insurance company, three open cases with the state insurance regulator ( one against the old company, and two against the new ) and have spent the past four months taking too many painkillers to feel comfortable working in the shop.
Surgery is this week. I’ll be coming home with more titanium in me. Hopefully recovery will suck less than the surgeon says it will.
No lawsuits, Duck. Just complaints with the state regulators. But the company I had my second year down here lost its license to insure New Mexicans after my (and others) complaints, and is now out of business completely. I wouldn’t mind seeing that happen to the one I started the year with, and it sounds possible, given that no neurosurgeon in New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, or Texas will accept an out-of-network payment from them, because they negotiate a price, and then refuse to pay it after the work is done. And there was zero hesitation as I was calling around. “Oh, those guys? Nope. Can’t take that; they don’t pay their bills. Sorry.”
The vase is a hair over 9 inches high. The distance between two feet is 7 inches. It will just sit on a finished 1x8.
The top rim design was cut with a skew for the circumferential lines (I should’ve used a bedan for a 45 degree angle to match the v-tool), then by hand with a palm v-tool while the vase was in the lathe. I think it’s a 45 degree 3mm V from FlexCut. I thought about making some sort of indexing wheel, but decided to just wing it.
I hollowed it with a forstner bit to start, then one of Dave Kelley’s round carbide tools. I’ve got a laser guided hollowing rig, but it’s a pain to set up, so I just freehanded on this one and left it thicker than it had to be. The interior flares a little at the bottom, but the side walls are still over ¼ inch thick, maybe a full ⅜ inch, and I probably left the end-grain in the bottom ¾ inch thick. The epoxy went on maybe 1-2 mm thick on the bottom sides, and maybe a full eighth thick on the bottom, when I got tired of tipping and rotating the vase by hand.
The donut (nobody asked, but what the heck) was just a butt-joined mitered hexagon of live oak pieces mounted on a pine sacrificial face plate. I turned it mostly round on the inside and outside with a square carbide bit, then rounded the top side with a round carbide tool, and undercut the bottom with the detail carbide tool. Once I joined the undercuts and freed the piece, it went into the carving vise for some knife work to smooth out the bottom, then onto a jam-chuck on the lathe for some sanding to get it just right.
Dave, first and foremost - sorry to hear about your back problems and and the insurance agencies. I hope all comes out to your satisfaction, especially your back. As for the vase, very nice. I like the mounting base, quite unique and very creative design. You are the Lathe Master Extraordinaire. Take care with your back, wish you all the best.
Thanks, Tom! Don’t know about extraordinaire, but I had fun figuring this out, and I’ll probably be exploring the design more next year.
After recovery, I need to get busy and finish the cover for the master bedroom fireplace that I started almost a year ago. Then there’s the Jimmy Possum chair I have roughed the pieces for. Plus there’s the laptop I’m building, which is getting a wooden case. Plus a few boxes for smaller computers, mostly Raspberry Pis with eInk displays.
But first I need to recover from the surgery. Doc said 6-8 weeks during the initial consult. We’ll see what he says after cutting me open and adding the aftermarket hardware.
