Been making some bonsai display tables and haven't turned anything
in a while. But part of the project required turning a pair of small
rosewood "feet"to fix a screw up -make that an "oversight" - aka a
Thinko (the mental equivalent of a Typo).

http://home.comcast.net/~charliebcz/...aiStands5.html

It's amazing how quickly the eye/hand coordination / muscle
memory drops of if not used regularly.

So I cut up some scraps - maple, mahogany, padouk and some
mystery wood and turned a small boatload of pegs and pulls.
Didn't take long before the rusty muscle memory came back
for the skew. With a slight curve it's one handy tool.

From now on I'm going to keep a chunk of wood chucked up
and ready to play with - while the glue or finish dries on a
project. Always handy to have a few pegs and pulls around -
there's always stuff that needs to be hung up or something
that needs a pull or knob.

charlie b

charlie b wrote:
Been making some bonsai display tables and haven't turned anything
in a while. But part of the project required turning a pair of small
rosewood "feet"to fix a screw up -make that an "oversight" - aka a
Thinko (the mental equivalent of a Typo).

http://home.comcast.net/~charliebcz/...aiStands5.html

Hey Charlie those are real nice stands. A great idea using a bridge.
Nice oriental style to them.

Canchippy wrote:

Hey Charlie those are real nice stands. A great idea using a bridge.
Nice oriental style to them.

Thanks. Oddly enough, most Americans think of the "clouds"
in the bottom of the apron as something Greene & Greene
or Stickley invented. As Steve Jobs of Apple said - "If you're
going to steal ideas, steal from the best." (see PARC where
GUI - Graphical User Interface and The Mouse were invented).
G&G and Stickley got the "clouds" from Chinese furniture
designers/makers who'd been doing them for three or four
hundred years before they were born. Lots to learn from
Chinese furniture - though you have to dig a lot to find out
what the joinery you never see in the finished piece looks like
- and some of their joinery is extremely complex.

Not sure why, given a millenium or so of woodworking, but I
don't recall seeing any Chinese furniture components that
look like they were turned. In fact, I'm not aware of any pieces
that have round parts at all - the preference seems to be
towards oval cross sections - perhaps in keeping with one
of the periods that went for minimalism while maintaining
the required structural strength of the piece. They play
with a lot of illusions of delicacy and lightness. But if you
look inside or under what appears to be something delicate
you find a lot more beef in places you can't normally see.

Anyone have any links to any turned Chinese wood pieces?

charlie b

charlie b wrote:
Canchippy wrote:
Not sure why, given a millenium or so of woodworking, but I
don't recall seeing any Chinese furniture components that
look like they were turned. In fact, I'm not aware of any pieces
that have round parts at all - the preference seems to be
towards oval cross sections - perhaps in keeping with one
of the periods that went for minimalism while maintaining
the required structural strength of the piece. They play
with a lot of illusions of delicacy and lightness. But if you
look inside or under what appears to be something delicate
you find a lot more beef in places you can't normally see.

Anyone have any links to any turned Chinese wood pieces?

charlie b
Hi Charlie,

Not long ago I shared with a different group some pictures of chinese
woodworking tools that my friend took while visiting there, I was also
surprised that no lathe was shown, although china had the lathe a long
time ago (and it is in wide use in the rest of asia as well).
http://picasaweb.google.com/meshel/I...eseWoodWorking

One person on the group said the following
http://nika.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~c...sage_id=161936
This doesn't shed any light on the issue, but it affirms what you just
said...