Well, I had to try sooner or later. Encouraged by efforts reported here, and
by turnings I recently saw locally, I had to give it a try. I am aware of
some mistakes and will likely discover others when I try again later.

Back in about 1950-56 my dad had a little store in Minneapolis, selling what
he called custom woods. He had samples from countries which now no longer
exist, and other countries we can no longer visit. He had samples of woods
which may not even be readily available any more. Some of these pieces were
labeled, and other not - or the labels no longer readable.

It seemed natural, finally, to try to glue some of them together and see what
woujld happen.

This is a smallish jar with lid. Glued up with yellow glue and extra waste
blocks on each end to maximize the amount of usable hardwood for the project.
I turned the basic shape between centers, parting off a section for the lid.
Head end was on a faceplate, so now I could bore out the interior with a
forstner bit. Once the inside was opened up, I finished with a home made
hook. The inside was trued up with a home made curved scraper tool also seen
on the flickr site.

Sanding through to 400 grit and burnished with wood shavings, the final
finish is paste wax. There are some fine scratches I did not see until after
the waxing.

I did mount the lid and the jar to a chuck for the final work and sanding
stages. My chuck is a Penn Industries bowl chuck, and I have mounted some 1
1/2 inch thick softwood scraps to the face of the chuck with bolts. Open the
chuck about halfway and then turn as if I were making a basic friction chuck
- except that I did not have to be so fussy on the inside diameter and could
tighten and loosen the chuck as needed - also had enough grip range for the
diffeent diameters on the lid, then turned the setup again, to the larger
diameter needed for the jar itself, for turning the foot.

I noticed that it was really jarring (no pun intended) to turn something with
these varying degrees of hardness, plus the sudden changess from end grain to
face grain. The hard maple had some difficult aspects, as it was a chunk of
curly maple left over from a flintlock project of years ago.

Had some interesting chatter on the top of the lid. Bearings are decent on
the lathe, so am hoping it was just finding the best speed for the turning
and the best angle of attack for the tools... and not quite succeeding yet.

The ebony finial was turned separately with a spigot on the end, set into a
turned bore in the top of the lid, and glued.


www.flickr.com/photos/55616gandy/

Comments, questions and critiques, it's all good for me.

tom koehler

--
I will find a way or make one.