On Nov 12, 9:14 pm, "Darrell Feltmate"
wrote:

SNIP

Thanks for the insights George. I like the thought of the cotter keys. The
eyes are only costing me a couple of cents each so I will likely stay with
them, certainly until the last batch runs out.

Darrell - great work as always, and thanks for posting it for us. I
personally love offset turning, and do a lot of mushrooms and
treenware handles offset, like that offset, but hadn't really thought
about an icicle.

Here's a thought on the hangers. A few years ago I had a bunch of
knotty little burls that were not too solid, and a little punky. I
used them as caps on other ornaments I was making. My problem was
that almost every one split when trying to put in an eye, even a tiny
one. And the small ones couldn't get enough bite in the punky wood to
be reliable as they just chewed the wood out. A trip to Big Lots
presented a solution when I wasn't looking for one.

I bought a fishing kit there that had a ton of gold colored fish hooks
in it. I clipped off the hook end leaving the straight shaft at the
desired length, put a kink in the shaft and inserted that into my
little hole with a drop of thick CA on it. Problem solved and the
tiny gold eyes look great on small ornaments.

Another fellow in my club showed me his trick for all his ornaments.
He drills a hole in the top of the ornament with a dentist's burr (any
tiny bit would do) and he puts dot of thick CA over the hole. He
makes a small loop of fishing line and puts a small dot of CA on the
ends. He inserts the ends into the hole, works it up and down a
couple of times and he is done. This type of hanger really looks
great as it doesn't show up at all when the ornament is hung, and you
couldn't get any cheaper.

Robert