Saturday April 21, 2018 was the 5th Annual Riverside Art Market.
This was held at the Riverside Art Museum and the Riverside Metropolitan Auditorium in downtown Riverside.
We began our set up on Friday from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm.
I returned Saturday at 8:00 am and finished setting up and was ready for business when the Market opened at 11:00 am.
We had a very good day of sales which included some of everything we took.
There was also entertainment wandering about.
So far I have rough turned 35 bowls from the Jacaranda wood rescued from down at the end of the street.
I am putting them into a large paper bag full of shavings and letting them slowly dry out for the next few months.
Two recent adventure gathering wood near by.
One was a lot of small branches from some sort of Ficus trees. This will make a lot of cups, vases and other things.
The second was located just at the end of our block where a Jacaranda tree had to be removed due to termite damage. So far I have rough turned about 20 bowls and expect to end up with 50 to 60 bowls when finished.
The bowls range from 6 to 16 inches in diameter. Most are between 10 and 12 inches.
After roughing out the bowls they are packed in paper bags filled with shavings to slow down the drying process to help reduce cracking.
I have learned about another item that is used by knitters and those who wear holes in their socks.
Darning eggs provide a means to shape the sock so you can easily stitch it back together.
There are two styles, some are plain while the others have a handy compartment in the handle to store your darning needles.
One of the more challenging woodturning tasks is making segmented bowls.
Some advantages of segmented turning is you can easily repeat an item and they take a lot less wood that if you made the item from a single solid piece.
This is how I made a vase from 3/4″ Russian Birch Plywood. (it did state on the board that it was made in Russia)
First I cut the board into more manageable sizes and then began to rip the wood for the segments.
The plywood was ripped into pieces just over 1 inch wide. I left the saw set where it was incase I needed more pieces to cut.
The next step was to cut the segments for the bottom or base of the vase.
After that it was simply cut pieces for each succesive ring.
This item has 13 rings with each ring being made from 16 pieces. I also made a plug for the bottom that used 2 additional pieces of wood. Total of 210 pieces were used.
Rings were glued together using AeroMarine 300/311 epoxy. This is a slow curing adhesive which gives more time to build the rings.
After the rings are glued together they are stacked together on the lathe to make sure they were all signed up properly.
The last step was to turn first the outside then the inside of the vase.
I used my Jamieson hollowing jig to turn the inside. This is easier and safer for both the finished item and the lathe operator that using regular gouges and scrapers.
After turning the vase was sanded and finish was applied.
After who knows how many hours to cut segments, making and stacking the rings it took about 1 hour and 20 minutes to turn and finish the vase.
I plan to begin a new plywood vase in the next few days.
One of the YouTube channels I frequently is Brendon Stemp.
He is a very accomplished wood turner located in Australia.
Two different videos inspired making this project: https://youtu.be/7PHwjtgyX3I and https://youtu.be/s54ZJyEbKMY.
I started off with one of the slabs from a large Ficus tree that we got some wood from in 2017.
I roughed out the bowl and then cut a deep wide groove in what would become the top of the bowl.
I then used hot melt adhesive to attach some Eucalyptus Seeds in the groove. After the glue had set and cooled I then filled the groove with Liquid Diamonds Resin and placed it into my pressure pot and waited about 48 hours to make sure the resin had fully cured.
Once it was out of the pressure pot I began turning it.
I then reversed the bowl and hollowed out the inside.
After finishing off the bottom of the bowl it told me it wanted a lid. With a nice final on it, thank you. Sorry no pictures of the lid being made.
The next request was to make three feet for it to stand on.
I then realized that a UFO had landed in my back yard!
The January Challenge for the Orange County Wood Turner’s Club was to make a three cornered bowl.
This is one of the more terrifying things for a wood turner to try.
My bowl started off as three different 4X4X2 blocks of different types of hardwood that were glued together, cut in half and then rotated and glued back together again.
When you begin turning this you put the block into the head stock and tail stock of the lathe.
After creating a tenon on the bottom end of the bowl its is mounted into a 4 jaw chuck and the turning continues.
The next step was to make a lid for the box before cutting off the foot and finishing the box.
On February 19, 2018 we went to San Diego, CA to look at some Eucalyptus wood behind a friend’s house.
The first surprise was that there was no road behind her house to where the wood was located.
The second surprise was that not only was there no truck access to the wood it would have to be carried out up hill from where the tree was located.
After going back to get the chain saw I went back down and began to cut up the large branch that had fallen from the tree. It looks to have fallen about 30 feet and knocked down part of an old abandoned wood play house.
I cut off three pieces from the branch and quickly realized they were too heavy to carry out so I then cut them in half length wise and began the job of carrying them out.
After carrying the wood up to the truck we returned home.
Over the next couple of days I cut these pieces in half and then roughed out twelve bowls.
After roughing out the bowls I put them in pails full of shavings to slow down the drying process and will check on then every month or so until they are ready to finish turn.
Come visit us in The Life Arts Center
The Woman’s Club of Orange is located at 121 South Center Street, Orange. It was a successful event with many vendors, making it fun to shop and please every patron who attended. The event was coordinated by Pat Longwell. She and club members were in attendance to greet vendors and assist with setup. The members also decorated the hall and facility. The weather was perfect, the threat of rain vanished and it was very pleasant to be outdoors in California. A Taco vendor was setup outside during the event and tacos were delicious. A sitting area for eating was created in the garden path. Our top sellers were Yarn Spinners, Tops, and Bowls. And we also sold Pens, Steam-rippers and a Pepper Mill. We thank the Woman’s Club of Orange members for hosting the event and look forward to the next one!
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