A few days ago, I decided to take inventory of my scrap wood corner, mainly to determine if I had enough to make some Christmas presents. I came across some Ash and Cherry wood, with a little amount of black veneer.
I had taken a segmented turning class a while back, and decided to make a couple of projects, thinking that I had just enough Ash and Cherry, if I did not make any mistakes.
As any Segmented Turner will tell ya, it's all about cutting angles, sanding, and using a whole lot of glue......with a little turning tossed in.
The bowl is made out of Ash, and consists of 61 pieces. The "Water Jug" is out of Cherry, and black veneer, and consists of 88 pieces.
I lucked out and managed to avoid any "one more cut" disasters on the lathe!
Beautiful work. There truly are no scraps in woodworking.
It motivates me, as soon as I get this cast of my foot in 2 months I'm going to get to the lathe.
Nice project.
Gary Kalyn
Kalynzoo Productions
Woodworking
Porter Ranch/Northridge
Los Angeles, CA
To answer your question, I would have to say, "Yes and No!" Yes, in the sense that these designs were the required projects when I was taking the Segmented Class, but not the class projects that I originally did.
When I came across the scrap ASH and Cherry, I determined approximately the amount of board feet that I had, and referred back to my class notes to see how much I actually needed.
I lucked out in that I had inches to spare, which was needed for safety reasons when cutting the individual segments. Literally, 3-4 inches for each segmented ring!
What is interesting is that the "water jug" is actually two "bowl halfs" made up of glued segmented rings, each half mounted to a faceplate. One half is mounted on the Tailstock, and the other half is mounted on the Headstock end. You must have a threaded(Live Tailstock Adaptor) 1x8 rotating adapter to accept the faceplate on the tailstock end.
The two halfs are then pushed together, and the entire outside of the water jug is turned, except for the base and the top ring. They are then separated, and the insides of each are turned.
Then, the two halfs are again mounted, pushed together, but this time, glue is applied to the two rims, and allowed to dry. In the water jug case, the glue line is the line between the two veneer lines. Once dry, the outside is touched up, the top is parted off, the neck is carefully completed, along with the base. The finish is applied, and finally the base is parted off.
Great looking projects. I have not tried any segmented turnings yet. From your description on the water jug, wow, a lot of work, but the end results are the joy of the finished project for all the effort put in. Someone should be real appreciative and pleased to receive a gift like that.
I don't want to scare you off but there is also a whole lot of math involved in Segmented Turning besides all the cutting, sanding, and gluing.
Fortunately, there are some excellent computer programs that do all that for you, allowing you to import a shape, vessel, etc, determine your rings, etc. and print out your cutting sheet (Segmented length) for each individual segmented ring.
Segmented Turning is very, very addictive! Once you have the basis down, you then want to start designing your "Feature Ring" which is a whole other story. Needless to say, some folks spend weeks in figuring out their design, and cutting the numerous pieces for that one ring.
This is why those Southwest design bowls, vessels are sold for big bucks. Just a whole lot of time spent, leading up to the actual turning.
