Two years on

Past and present

 Its just over 2 years since I made a Saueracker shell and painted it yellow, last week I started to fulfill my promise to make another and a larger one, this one is 350mm across but in order to make this I had to start with a piece of wood 600mm across it also has to have a backing board glued to it, all in all it took me 3 days to prepare the wood before I could put it on the wood lathe, it was too big to turn it as I would normally so I had to turn the head of my lathe to the side, it is a heavy piece so I started at a slow speed until I became comfortable and had the piece balanced.

I first saw a picture of this on The Canadian Woodworkers web site I was thankful that Lisa Chemerika posted the instructions, this time I went back to TCWW site and the instructions were still available, even with instructions it is not all plain sailing, there is a lot of stopping the lathe and looking at what I had done, stopping the lathe with such a large heavy piece traveling at 600 rpm is also not easy I needed leather gloves when I went to hold the hand wheel on the back of the lathe that acts as the brake

The first action is to turn the eye that is in the center when that is done and sanded the whole piece is removed from the lathe the 350mm piece that becomes the shell is unscrewed and rotated about 40mm when it is returned to the lathe the second part is turned, there are 8 parts to be turned so each time the whole piece is removed the shell rotated before it is screwed back in place and returned to the lathe, there was 3 days of turning involved, my days are short but it was a slow process.

The wood I have used is Tawa a New Zealand native that is heavy easy to cut but very plane so I have started to process of embellishment which will become another post here.

I have the choice of using the outer crescent but at the moment I have no intention of using it.