Working wood

Hi Everyone,
Well the big day has arrived.

Ive sharpened the tools:

And Ive cleaned up the shop..well almost cleaned up the shop:


Im going to round off the top of the box first and then hollow it out. Here is the beginning of this stage of the turn:

Here is a photograph several minutes later. Ive rounded off the sides and created a small bead on the mouth of the box:


Here Ive begun hollowing out the box. I just wanted to make it deep enough to hold earrings or other special stuff and not completely hollow it out:


This is the box several minutes later. You can see that the box is deeper and a little wide and the bead shows up prominently:


Here is the box after its been sanded, both inside and out. Now its time to turn the lid:


And Ive begun turning a tenon on the underside of the lid. This has to fit exactly into the box so it took about 20 minutes of turning between this photo and the next photo:


Great. This fits the box perfectly:

And here is a photo of the blank on the box. Time to shape the top:


 Since the top will be the first thing everyone sees it has to look great and emphasize the roundness of the box. There also is not going to be a finial on the top of the lid so it needs a a rim that can serve a a point for picking up the lid off the box.  Here Ive begun undercutting the lid:

I wanted the underside of the rim to match the diameter of the opening of the box and they match:



Here is the lid almost done. The top is a little too high so I turned it down more:


And now the lid is finished:


And here is the bottom of the box. The turning it done:


Here is a photograph of the box:

Woo Hoo!

I took it inside and wiped off the dust and put a coat of linseed oil on the top and bottom. Here are the finish photographs:




And here is the lid. If you look closely youll see a tiny hole at the edge of the lid at about 9 0clock. Thats a tiny worm hole that was present in the block of wood at the beginning. I kind of like having that little hole there:

And were done. I am going to apply a coat or two more of oil to the box and the lid and then let it cure for a day or two. At weeks end Ill send off the box to Sarah.

Happy Mothers Day to you all.

If youre a Mom, I hope you have great kids and you get to see or hear from them today.

If you lost your mom this year or if shes ill, know that Ill keep a prayer for you.

___________

Our next project is to finish Hollys bowl and Ill get to that later this week.

Take care and have a wonderful day and thanks for dropping by the wood shop. As always its a pleasure to have you here.

Best Always,
VW

Day 3 - stairway construction
Yes, it really does take an entire day to do a staircase! I am making it very similar to a real staircase - ie: it will be anotomically correct! :)

I started by making two exact stringers, or stair horses. I glued and brad nailed a 1/4" peice of maple on the back, like this:






Then, I glued and finished nailed the assembly into place, like this:



I also countersunk some screws into the bases of the stair horses to secure it into place forever!



I added treads and risers, and let Barbie try it out!!!



Modeling the new stairs...

Days 6 and 7 - scrolling the details
Before I can put the top on, I need to do the front and back panels on the top part of the dollhouse. For the back, I decided to do a repeating flower pattern. I chose to do this peice out of 1/4" oak. Because of the flower layout, this required alot of time in repositioning the blade, etc. There are 8 flowers total. I split the panel in half so I would only have to do 4 flowers. It takes roughly an hour per flower...


Here are the two panels glued and clamped in place...
And finally after the clamps come off...


Because the work peice is 4 wide, this is going to require several peice rotations and flips to catch all the lettering. I have already had to insert the blade backwards in the saw in order to cut out some of the letterings corners. This is the time consuming part.

I am finally getting to a point in my schedule where I can make some more headway on this project. After I get this scrolled out, I will be mounting it in place, and then securing the top!