Embellishments | Syzygy Woodworks

July 12, 2013June 17, 2017

Textured, cast pewter collar

During my demonstration at the Symposium in Tampa I showed a couple variations of my cast and threaded pewter collars for a hollow form. One that seemed to generate a lot of interest is shown in the image below. I thought I would share the details on how I make this collar. It is a very simple technique and allows you to cast the texture directly so that the topside of the collar does not need to be turned. The technique gives you a very organic texture and the collar, because it is not perfectly round, has a natural edge look to it.

The first step is to create the wooden mold. I made this one on the lathe using dry maple and simply drilled a 3/8″ deep hole with a 2 1/4″ Forstner bit. Then you will need to raid the kitchen for some aluminum foil.

Tear off a piece of the aluminum foil and fold it double. Then crunch it up so it is all wrinkled. Carefully open it up and line the mold with it, trying not to smooth out all the wrinkles. You don’t need to get it to form fit the mold, all you are trying to achieve is a general dished shape.

Pour the molten pewter directly onto the aluminum foil, wait for it to cool and then …

… pop the textured collar out from the aluminum foil. At this point you can mount it on the lathe in a chuck and drill and tap the threads. Then sand the top surface of the collar with some steel wool before applying a patina and then sanding again with steel wool.

The image below shows a detail shot of a similar collar in a suspended hollow form.

May 31, 2013June 6, 2013

Tissue Box Cover – Part 2

Last week I covered the cutting of the four sides and the top for the tissue box cover. This week I will be showing how I embellished the sides and top with some wood turning.

The first step was to lay the parts out in the order in which they would be assembled.

I then laid out where the opening for the tissues would be and also drew some decorative circles to indicate where the embellishments would go. The center of the 6″ circle falls directly at the intersection of two sides and the top. The center of the 4″ circle falls at the intersection of two sides and the center of the 5″ circle is offset from the intersection of two sides.

The idea is to have the turned embellishments wrap around the sides and top of the assembled box. The layout for the embellishments that fall on two faces is not that critical, however if the embellishment falls on three faces then it is critical that the center of the circle is exactly at the intersection of the three faces, or the embellishments will not flow around all three faces.

I started with the 4″ circle and put double-sided tape on the back of the two faces that it fell on.

I then stuck the two pieces on a 12″ plywood circle which was attached to a face plate. I lined the two pieces up so that the center of the circle was at the intersection of the two pieces.

A couple of notes about the plywood backing. I used two pieces of 3/4″ plywood laminated together and rough cut to 12″ diameter. The double thickness helps to stiffen the piece and reduce vibration and flex at the circumference. The laminated plywood was then screwed to a face plate mounted to the lathe and turned true. It is important to use a face plate with set screws and tighten the set screws to the lathe spindle once the face plate is mounted on the lathe. If you don’t use set screws there is a danger of the plywood continuing to turn after the lathe is shut off, and it will then unscrew itself from the lathe!

Once the pieces are in position I like to apply pressure to the double sided tape for a couple of minutes. I place a scrap piece of wood over the parts and applied pressure with the tail stock. I also applied pressure to the corners of the scrap wood with some clamps. A couple of minutes under pressure makes the double sided tape stick much better.

After removing the clamps, scrap wood and tail stock, I turned the lathe on at a very slow speed and standing off to one side slowly turned up the speed. I let it run for a couple of minutes and then checked to see that the pieces were secure and had not moved. Once I was satisfied they were secure I turned a hemisphere in the center and some further embellishments with a texturing tool and skew.

While turning I kept the speed fairly low, around 1000 rpm.
Don’t skimp on the double sided tape.
Apply pressure to the tape for a couple of minutes to increase the adhesion strength.
Rotate the plywood before turning on the lathe to make sure nothing comes into contact with the tool rest etc.
Keep your hands and fingers behind the tool rest!
Take care removing the parts from the plywood. Slow, gentle and constant pressure will cause the tape to slowly give.

This was the 5″ circle which was offset from the intersection of the two sides. I added a scrap piece of maple to help counter balance the offset weight.

Last, I turned the embellishments that would flow over two sides and the top of the tissue box cover. It was critical that I align the center of this circle with the intersection of the three pieces. I also added a scrap piece of maple in the one corner to counter balance the weight and also to help provide support to the cuts I was making.

I then moved to my scroll saw and cut out the opening in the top for the tissues.

The five parts laid out again.

I laid some clear packing tape across the four sides, flipped them over, applied a thin bead of glue to the four sides, then rolled the parts up into a box …

… and taped it together. The tension created as the tape is stretched when rolling the sides up is more than sufficient clamping pressure for this assembly.

I then applied a thin bead of glue to the four bevels of the top …

… and taped it in place.

The finished tissue box cover.

November 25, 2009

Chatter Tool Results

I finally got a chance to play with the chatter tool I made. My initial experiments were pretty disappointing. The tool was “screeching” as it is supposed to, but I only seemed to be able to put spiral grooves on the test piece. My first thought was that the blade was not thick enough and I was getting too much “deflection” and not enough “chatter”. I had used on old jigsaw blade, so I took an old sawzall blade and cut and shaped that. Even though it was wider, and offer less give, I was still just getting spiral grooves.

So I took the two blades back to the grinder and ground a very slight bevel on the edges. More importantly I rounded over the point of the blade so that instead of coming to a sharp point it came to a blunt, slightly round point. Immediately I started to see improvements! Both the jig saw blade and the sawzall blade worked great, although they did produce different patterns.

There are no shortage of patterns you can get with the chatter tool. Whether any of them are repeatable is open to debate though! A number of variables affect the pattern.

The amount of the blade sticking out the tool.
The distance from the tool rest to the work piece.
The speed of the lathe.
How hard you push the tool into the work piece.
How quickly you move the cutting edge across the work piece.
How many times you move the cutting edge across the work piece.
The angle the cutting edge is presented.

The image below shows some examples. I colored the patterns with a black permanent marker so they would show better in the image.

A chatter tool is used primarily in end grain, so applications include embellishments on box lids, spinning tops etc. The chatter tool will work better on hardwoods than softwoods.

After spending an hour or so playing with the tool, I feel the most important variables are lathe speed and distance of the tool rest from the work piece. For the most part the tool is presented so that the blade is horizontal and the handle is closer to you than the blade. The tool rest is about 4 to 6″ from the workpiece and lathe speed is around 1000 rpm. The blade is pushed into the wood and then pulled from the center to the edge. Rotating the tool slightly counter clockwise will change the pattern achieved, but it will also cause the tool to move towards the edge of the work piece a lot faster!! I found lathe speeds between 750 and 1800 worked with an optimum range between 1000 and 1200.

November 12, 2009August 28, 2019

Homemade Chatter Tool

I’ve been wanting to try some different embellishment techniques, one of which was chatter work. However I kept on balking at the price of a new chatter tool. I decided to make my own. It cost me $3.00 and a hour or two on a Sunday afternoon.

I got a 1/2″ x 10″ nipple from the plumbing department at the home improvement store, along with a 3/4″ long 1/4 20 bolt. The rest of the materials I used were in the shop already including a used jigsaw blade.

I mounted the pipe between centers on the lathe and after a bit of sanding it was nice and shiny. I then cut the threads off one end and drilled and tapped a 1/4 20 thread about 3/4″ back from that end.

The next step was to mount a cherry pen blank in a chuck and turn it down to 1/2″ so that if fit inside the pipe. I only turned down the first couple of inches, and then put it in a vise and cut it lengthwise. This off cut was then glued into the pipe with CA glue, the bolt served as a clamp.

After turning the block of wood to be used as a handle round, I drilled it to fit the the OD of the pipe. Unfortunately, the OD of the pipe was around 13/16″ and the only forstner bits I had were 3/4″ and 7/8″. So I drilled with the 3/4″ and then widened the hole using a square edge scraper until the pipe fit inside. The image below show the handle shaped and sanded, just prior to being parted off.

I’m playing with dyes at the moment, so I applied a red dye to the handle and then a couple of coats of shellac. While I was waiting for the shellac to dry, I ground the teeth off the jigsaw blade, shaped the point of the blade and bent it as in the image below.

The completed tool, ready for testing! Did I mention how nice and shiny it is!

I’ll show some pictures in a future post of the results from the tool. I also have a couple more jig saw blades and some sawzall blades. I plan on experimenting a bit with the different blades and profiles and see what sort of results I get.

If you’ve made a chatter tool let me know what type of blade and profile you got the best results with by posting a comment. Thanks.

Category: Embellishments

Textured, cast pewter collar

Tissue Box Cover – Part 2

Chatter Tool Results

Homemade Chatter Tool

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