Darlow Mike - Mike Darlows Woodturning Series: Useful Woodturning Projects

2021 by Mike Darlow and Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc., 903 Square Street, Mount Joy, PA 17552.

Useful Woodturning Projects is an original work, first published in 2021 by Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holders.

Print ISBN 9781497101579

eISBN 9781607659150

The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

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Since the publication in 2004 of my previous book, Turned Chessmen, I have continued to have about eight woodturning magazine articles published each year. Most have have been published in The Australian Woodworker published by Skills Publishing, and in GMCs Woodturning. I thank Art, Greg and Steven Burrows at Skills, and Mark Baker at GMC for their support and friendship over many years.

Content from The Australian Woodworker is included in (Whither Woodturning article, 5, 6 and 13. I apologize for any omissions or inaccuracies in these two statements.

I thank Emily Darlow for posing for the photograph. Also my wife, Aliki, for her tolerance and editing.

OTHER MIKE DARLOW WOODTURNING PUBLICATIONS

Books

The Practice of Woodturning

The Fundamentals of Woodturning

Bassiswisen Drechseln

Woodturning Methods

Woodturning Techniques

Woodturning Design

DVDs

The Practice of Woodturning

Sharpening Woodturning Tools

The Taming of the Skew

My objectives with this book are to revive the turning of useful items, and to inspire readers to seek other useful turning subjects.

In the first four books of my woodturning series I covered the techniques of hand woodturning. The fifth book in the series, Turned Chessmen published in 2004, was my first project book. It was forecast to flop by a woodwork book marketing expert. 16 years after publication it continues to sell well. Feedback from buyers confirms that the books background and history content have been a major factor in the books success, being appreciated both by the turners, and, when passed on, by the users of those chess sets. This second project book continues that approach, and will thus, I hope, interest even those readers who arent about to undertake any of its projects.

Instead of focussing on one type of useful turning, this books projects cover a wide range. Some might consider that range too esoteric. My excuses are that it mirrors my own interests in turning, and illustrates the scope to explore.

The interest in turning useful projects has waned in recent decades. I believe that if turners increase the proportion of useful items in their output they would:

enjoy their turning at least as much

gain the potential to enjoy using the turnings they keep

find that their turnings were better appreciated by others.

By useful I mean can be used for other than aesthetic, contemplative or emotion-creating purposes. A useful turnings usefulness may be entirely due to the turning, as in a pastry-cooks rolling pin. At the other extreme the turning may only add three-dimensional ornament to an item which is no less useful without the turning. Of course useful turnings arent always bought to be usedmost buyers of Japanese tea caddies, such as those in , now buy them as ornaments and souvenirs and continue to make their tea with tea bags.

How to describe turnings which arent useful in the way Ive described? My dictionary of antonyms offers useless as the antonym of useful. However, aesthetic, contemplative and emotion-creating purposes are valid and certainly not useless. For want of a better term, I shall therefore describe turnings which arent useful as non-useful.

Many now live in surroundings in which the only relatively unaltered natural substances are the air and the tap water. Wood is an obsolescent (becoming obsolete) material, and therefore woodturning is an obsolescent skill. But, if youre reading this, youve probably already decided to disregard this truth and continue enjoy using a lathe to shape wood.

Figure 1.1 Three Japanese-style tea caddies turned from European ash (Fraxinus excelsior). They have incurved flanges so that the finely powdered green tea doesnt billow into the air when the lid is lifted, not tugged, off. The top of the lid is almost flat, and during the tea ceremony a bamboo teaspoon or chashaku rests on it. In the bottom is a recess to grip on the hand.

The Japanese words for tea caddy are chaire and chaki. This type is a natsume, and is used to store the powdered tea for making thin tea.

Figure 1.2 A chair with at least eight designs of identical spindle.

I contend that during recent decades the hand turning of useful items has declined relative to that of non-useful items. As evidence I cite the 1921 edition of Paul Nooncree Haslucks The Wood Turners Handybook. demonstrate. In contrast, todays woodturning often features non-useful bowls and vessels and the non-turning techniques which are used to apply two-dimensional decoration and three-dimensional ornament.

Its true that during the last 50 years woodturning as an artisan and industrial technique to produce useful items (mainly components for buildings, furniture and woodware) has declined, but not disappeared. Its also true that during that time hobby woodturning has increased in popularity, and its undoubtedly true that part of that increase is because woodturning has been increasingly promoted as a technique which can be exploited to create Fine Art. In many examples though the turning is a subsidiary technique used to provide a base for the decoration and ornament.