On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 15:43:17 GMT, Derek Andrews
wrote:

OK. Here are a few thoughts for you:

1- if I understand you correctly, you laminated the blank up from
boards. How long did you leave them clamped up? The way I understand it
you did the whole job in one evening. I would be leaving the blank
clamped overnight.

Two hours- Coming from a more furniture-based approach to things where
30 minutes is usually long enough to get back to work, I figured that
would be long enough. Of course, then I tried this with another
blank, and I had exactly the same problem- must have jumped the gun
with the cure time. My previous laminated blanks were mahogany that
set for weeks, not hours.

2- could the plugs you used have acted like wedges to open up the glue
lines.

No, they were cut from the same board, and set perfectly flush.

3- you only see birdseyes on the flat sawn surfaces of the board. It
really doesn't make good material for spindle turning. The birdseyes are
formed as little tubes growing radially in the tree. If you make a
radial cut in a log, all you will see is the sides of these tubes.

On the bright side, I went back to work on the piece yesterday, and
turned the thing down to a much thinner diameter, taking the two
outside pieces of the laminated blank right off with the roughing
gouge, and the finished product has some bird's eye again. It's
thinner than I would have liked, but it turned out all right after
all. In the future, I'll be saving the bird's eye for other things
(Though I have decided I'm a big fan of the way Maple in general
finishes up)

4- with a few exceptions, notably some very well though out segmented
bowls, laminating blanks leads to finished products that have little
aesthetic appeal, to me at any rate.

It's pretty hit or miss, that's for sure- but when it works out, they
can be very striking. For now, I'm mainly focusing on chisel
technique and finishing, so it works out ok for my purposes. Of
course I'd love to have big hunks of burl to work on, but that's down
the road a ways- it's unlikely I'll be able to find anything until the
spring storms hit, and some trees start coming down.

Derek

Prometheus wrote:
This evening, I had the basically sound idea that I should turn a
lamp... I went out and got the hardware and decided that the plank of
bird's eye maple I had down in the shop would look great as a lamp
base. So, I got the blank cut to size and ready for assembly (I'm
using all kiln-dried lumber for now, so most or all of my blanks are
laminated) I figured that it'd be a whole lot easier to run the wires
through the finished lamp if I left a space in the center, so I cut a
half inch out of the middle of the center plank, and made some nice
plugs for each end to set the centers into. Seemed like a good idea
at the time, but it turns out that the hole in the center really
should be square, and not .75 x .5!

So, I got it up on the lathe, and started turning away. Everything
was basically fine except for a bit of extra vibration, until I turned
off the lathe to check my progress. Turns out that bit of extra
vibration caused the panels to crack apart about 1/32 of an inch in
four spots right in the most prominant space on the lamp. The cracks
are about 4" long, and approximately 1/16" deep.

I tried sanding the sucker for alomst an hour with 60 grit to no
avail, and any attempts to cut or scrape the area just makes the gaps
wider and deeper. And as an extra kick in the pants, most of the
bird's eyes turned right out of the blank- so it just looks like
regular maple with a little curl to it.

Aut inveniam viam aut faciam