Design Approaches - Start With A Blank Slate - Or ...?

One approach to coming up with designs for turnings is to
look at many pieces as possible - photos, drawings, hands
on - then pick a style or an aggregate of styles
that appeals to you and start turning your versions.

Another approach is basically the application of western
classical proportions - derived, unfortunately, mainly
from Greek architecture - lots of geometry and layout
lines. The wood is merely the medium for creating
The Ideal Form.

The Form Follows Function Approach - a vase for a long
stemmed rose - tall and narrow, with most of the weight
as low as possible. The wood should not detract from
the rose(s).

The cousin of The Form Follows Function approach is
the "I Have This Slick Tool Which Does _____" and
it's non-identical twin "I'm Really Good With This (skew,
spindle gouge, skewgie, Ellsworth Grind) Tool."
- Tooling Determines the Piece

Some come at design from "It looks like it's made
of (leather, metal, ceramic, stone) - but it's WOOD!".
I see Turned Wood Cowboy Hats and all Segmented
Turned Pieces in this "school". We use to call this
sort of thing Mind F*CK - just screwing with your
head - man.

Then there's the Mixed Media Approach - "If you look
hard enough you'll eventually find the wood in this
piece, amongst the gold and silver leaf, the titanium
wires, chemical and paint patination and the ground
stone and epoxy and mother of pearl inlay.".

The current D'jour Design Approach seems to be
heavy on "texturing" - chatter tools, carving tools
and grinding tools ads everywhere. At some point,
someone will discover the pipe maker's Coral Cutting
Machine (two flat spear point "drills", set about 20
degrees apart which rotate and alternate making
contact with the wood - distance between contact
points can be varied) and "coral" texturing will become
the rage.

The What The Hell Is It approach sets out to create
things in wood which a) don't look like anything anyone's
ever seen before and b) selects wood that'll allow
the making of some or all of the components of the
piece. A “Winged Vessel” is an example of this
type of thing

Being formally trained as an engineer, I find the
How In The Hell Did He/She Make That approach
interesting. Escoulen's asymetric and eccentric
turned pieces facinate me. These are the pieces
that sometimes keep me awake for a day or so
working out how they were probably done.

I personally lean heavily towards “I wonder what’s
hiding in this chunk of wood?”. I just turned a
series of small lidded boxes from an old split
rail cedar fence post. Under the rough gray
surface, below thirty years of dirt and grime
- tight straight grain. Perfect for aligning
the lid to the base of a turned box. This
approach often ends with nothing left to
turn and a floor covered a foot deep in curlies
and chips. Alas, large quantities of horse
manure do not always mean there’s a pony
somewhere close by, if not within the pile.
But I’ve found a lot of ponies and the rest
makes good composting material and kindling.

So what approach do you take when it’s
for a piece just for you?

charlie b

charlie b wrote:
Design Approaches - Start With A Blank Slate - Or ...?

One approach to coming up with designs for turnings is to
look at many pieces as possible - photos, drawings, hands
on - then pick a style or an aggregate of styles
that appeals to you and start turning your versions.

Another approach is basically the application of western
classical proportions - derived, unfortunately, mainly
from Greek architecture - lots of geometry and layout
lines. The wood is merely the medium for creating
The Ideal Form.

The Form Follows Function Approach - a vase for a long
stemmed rose - tall and narrow, with most of the weight

as low as possible. The wood should not detract from
the rose(s).

Yep I'm up for that. Coming from flatwork it seems the most logical

Some come at design from "It looks like it's made
of (leather, metal, ceramic, stone) - but it's WOOD!".
I see Turned Wood Cowboy Hats and all Segmented
Turned Pieces in this "school". We use to call this
sort of thing Mind F*CK - just screwing with your
head - man.

Hats are OK as a technical challenge but they are getting to be "old
hat" (G) Segmented does nothing for me just makes me think "brick wall"

Then there's the Mixed Media Approach - "If you look
hard enough you'll eventually find the wood in this
piece, amongst the gold and silver leaf, the titanium
wires, chemical and paint patination and the ground
stone and epoxy and mother of pearl inlay.".

OK so we all get crummy wood once in a while and spend too long making
a silk purse to find it is still a sows ear. So what are you gonna do?

The current D'jour Design Approach seems to be
heavy on "texturing" - chatter tools, carving tools
and grinding tools ads everywhere. At some point,
someone will discover the pipe maker's Coral Cutting
Machine (two flat spear point "drills", set about 20
degrees apart which rotate and alternate making
contact with the wood - distance between contact
points can be varied) and "coral" texturing will become
the rage.

Sometimes I'm tempted but the Sorby texture/spiral tools are out of my
budget and I am not interested enough to make some of my own

The What The Hell Is It approach sets out to create
things in wood which a) don't look like anything anyone's
ever seen before and b) selects wood that'll allow
the making of some or all of the components of the
piece. A "Winged Vessel" is an example of this
type of thing

"What the Hell" is normally my reaction when it goes seriously wrong!
That's putting it mildly!

Being formally trained as an engineer, I find the
How In The Hell Did He/She Make That approach
interesting. Escoulen's asymetric and eccentric
turned pieces facinate me. These are the pieces
that sometimes keep me awake for a day or so
working out how they were probably done.

Now this is my Numero Uno obsession. Not so much the eccentric but
multi centre. I have a vase that was done on 4 centres and I still
haven't figured out how the hell it was done. It would be nice if I
could figure out the geometry needed to give me some idea of what will
be taken away and what will be left when a centre is moved. Hit and
miss gets to be a bit of a let down and I'm not good at taking notes.

I personally lean heavily towards "I wonder what's
hiding in this chunk of wood?". I just turned a
series of small lidded boxes from an old split
rail cedar fence post. Under the rough gray
surface, below thirty years of dirt and grime
- tight straight grain. Perfect for aligning
the lid to the base of a turned box. This
approach often ends with nothing left to
turn and a floor covered a foot deep in curlies
and chips. Alas, large quantities of horse
manure do not always mean there's a pony
somewhere close by, if not within the pile.
But I've found a lot of ponies and the rest
makes good composting material and kindling.

Well this is where I am right now and you know it's a comfortable place
to be. I keep picking up pieces of junk wood from all over and hoping
one of them has that $1M bowl, HF, thingamajiggy in it but no luck so
far and hell I'm enjoying it!

On Fri, 06 Oct 2006 20:58:59 -0700, charlie b wrote:

for a piece just for you?

charlie b

Sometimes I chuck it up because I think there's some nice grain beneath
the bark and no other reason. Those times I really DO let the wood decide
what it wants to be ... cutting until I think there is no more pretty to
expose and it's all ugly after this.

Most days I turn the lathe on ... but not so often that I have lost my
sense of wonder as the patterns in the wood begin to reveal themsleves.
I'm not sure I could ever be a production turner. I stop to smell the
shavings too often.

Other times I chuck up because I've seen something in a magazine and want
to try out the techniques mentioned ... plus maybe a variation or two I
have in the back of my mind. Fer instance (without giving too much away
before I've had a chance to try it myself) there's a technique in the
American Woodturner for Fall 2006 that I'd like to marry to a technique in
the Summer issue of the same magazine ... and I'm thinking that the
judicious addition of a -tiny- sliver of metal would make for a very
compelling combination and a justifiably outrageous price.

Stay away from the AW magazines ... down that path lies insanity ... and
insomnia!

Still other times I chuck up and try to guess what will actually make the
current customer happy. Now THAT is the real challenge!

Bill