A Unifying Theory of Spindle Design - a box making exersise

welcome back to where Tampa woodworking my name is Shawn and today we're going to be talking about the grand unifying theory of spindle design now I'm gonna qualify this video right here and now I do not consider myself an artist or actually a very good craftsman I consider myself a teacher who's just constantly looking for new ways to express an idea so that a beginning level level student can ramp up their learning curve to get to a high enough levels of experts can come in and send them sky-high now this doesn't mean I want to have more knowledge than the experts I just want to be able to explain it better so that the student understands more and can apply more and can retain that knowledge a lot longer now in my mind spindle turning is the true art form in this in the turning world and I've heard it time and time again a good spindle Turner can transition into other branches of wood turning and succeed with fairly little more learning or effort it's a tool control that they really do grasp whereas somebody that's just a strict bow Turner they might need to transition to spindle turning for something and they struggle a little wash with the learning curve the spin of turning just gives you that dexterity to do the other forms but that doesn't mean if you learned a spindle turn that you're going to have that artistic expression you see out there with those really fine finials or the great chair stair banisters or even chair legs they're just expertly turned with these perfect curls curves that just seem to express so much that is a true art form and if you're wanting to learn that kind of stuff it can be really frustrating especially if you're a nincompoop learner like me who just goes into these lectures or these symposiums or reads of books and think that that I understand they're speaking English but I don't understand what they're say now here's an example I truly respect a spindle Turner by the name of Cindy Dresden her videos are truly artwork I mean that she's kind of the go-to person if any OHS and sip is and suppose him for people to bring in to teach on that one stuff so in this last symposium I spent a entire session just running her design principles and I left it just lost hate to say that I just did not understand and she's also written many articles and here's an example let me give you a quote this is from American Association of woodturning that got permission to reprint an article that she titled an analytic approach to finial design an analytical approach to finial design and here's the opening quote for the whole piece transitions separate the elements and provides a composition with a beginning and an ending like tick tock punctuation Xin a piece of music transitions control and direct the motion of the composition and the article goes on from there it's like they're speaking in big abstracts whereas me as a beginner I just need some foundations for me to base my initial expressions on and then maybe after I turn 10,000 pieces we can talk about bigger abstracts just give me a basic foundation and I really haven't found anything out there to give them so that's what we are going to be working on is I'm hypothesizing with this theory that this might be able to help some people out and always be weary of people trying to encompass my whole philosophy down to one or two sentences because they basically stripped away all nuance I hate a sentence they might have strip away the artistic but I just want a foundation to stir it on that's what we're all we're trying to do here so here's my idea in artistic spindle design you are allowed to repeat themes proportions ratios symmetries and volumes but never dimensions and you want to do this on a global ratio me to simplify even further you're allowed to repeat elements but just not dimensions and try to do it on a two-thirds scale where two to one ratios and from there just experiment see what works see what your artistic expression comes up with this is a bit of trial and error but every beginning painter starts by drawing stick figures and that's the artistic level we are at right now so this grand unified theory of spin the design is simply your ladder repeat elements just don't repeat dimensions now the exercise I've devised to explore this theory is based on a lot of different motivations once again I work art markets quite a bit to pay my bills and I want to come up with top seasonal items that it's fairly quick for me to make that can make a decent profit on and it'd be nice if I could sell hope us turn that one season but then continue to sell the products year-round and I'm thinking Valentine's Day is coming up so making a nice ring boxes to complement other gifts would be a good idea and in the off season since it seems four out of five artists and art markets are jewelry vendors maybe I could sell these ring boxes to other vendors who could then pass it on as maybe a secondary sale the other motivation is I have a whole bunch of experiments and mallet designs or mouths I made that didn't quite deem sellable or ones that I was using in the school or for whatever reason I still have them and they are fully dried wood so it's very valuable wood to me well I can make little ring boxes with finials on the top to explore this theory and make something productive so I'm not just wasting my time I can make time turn time into money the idea originally came from this picture that I've been I've had on my wall for about a year now and this guy did a design exercise where he's been making little ring stands something just put your wedding ring on while you wash dishes and he's making hundreds of them of all different woods and he's promised himself he's never going to do the same one twice that's just a creative exercise to improve his artistic skills I like that idea and I'll go apply that same thing here I'm not going to make a single one the same and then at the end we can examine them see how they adhered to my grand unifying theory and in the comments below you can say hey did it work did it that did it not work which one did you like which ones did you not like and we'll go from there now I don't expect this video is going to be on how to turn a box kind of video again this is a design exercise I don't want to leave your out on the crowd so real quickly I'm going to show you the tools I'm going to be using most of the time or most of the tools how I use them a few techniques and then we'll go from there while I'm doing this I'm also going to film a secondary video to kind of complement this that just delves into lid construction in lid joining that thing will be pretty cool that will it will export a few days later so take let's take a look at the tools and techniques I'll be using to create these boxes and then we will go along and build a whole bunch of them and after it's done explore from there okay like we've said earlier this is spindle turning which basically means that the tree is on its side spinning around its center so you're always going with the grain if you're going towards the center of the tree this is not like bold turning or you might actually be spending the tree like this so you're going to end grain long grain integrating the long grain and a lot of these times I'm going to be basically starting between centers which means I have a drive center on this side and a live center which spins freely on this side squeezing in between and this is a very safe way of turning it I could I in my particular instance I have a drive center that's being squeezed in a Chuck because I'm going to be using a Chuck for most of the work basically I'm going to turn a tenon to put into the Chuck to hold it so I can take away this live Center and it can just freed spend freely I'm also going to be using to laze I have a little mini lathe that take out two live demonstrations and stuff and instead of having to take parts off put them back on get them all realigned it's a lot easier for me to just chuck up one half of a box on this side another half on the box of this side and then make sure that the parts fit together I can take this Chuck off without taking the wood out of it and put it over here it's a efficiency for mass production in my mind so that's what I'm going to be trying out this way I'm also trying out a Chuck I borrowed from my dad to see how it is this is a new grizzly with style so we're going to see how I've used I've got a what they call spicket Chuck's on that one because basically these mallets this is going to become the top and the finial so I will turn this very even and I'll be able to slide it in here to turn the base to the fitting that mechanism and then I could take that off once it gets fitted perfectly put it on there tape it down and then turn a finial to match the rest of it so it should make things a little bit easier now the first bit is to always get rid of all the roughness make everything even and because there's a spindle turning I can use a spindle roughing gouge now this is only used in spindle turning whenever I remove the live center away and start doing ingrain work this will not come out the reason being is they make these by folding up a flat piece of metal which means the metal is flat when it goes into the tank so it's very very weak and you don't want to be turning in great with this one because if it catches and grabs it will either bend or break at that thing spin around sticking your neck you bleed to death that's a Jimmy cheese clues hang and I just kind of like it cuz it's memorable you just don't why using this on anything other than spindle gouges spindle turning so you might use this for roughing but by the way I got both of these lays in their high gear and I just finished fast they'll go okay so once you guys smooth around this tool is now done now let's say I use this a lot of times on other spent trainings when I'm just trying to remove a lot of bulk worth because it's very easy to sharpen the stop tool the second tool you'll see me to use quite a bit especially spindle turning is askew gouge especially this bigger one though I do use a smaller one as a black handle but both of them are sharpened the same they've bent got a straight point on half of it that's a slight angle and then the other half is curved and this tool does a lot of my bulk work if I need to remove the material fit really fast I might do what's called a paring cut by laying it down face riding my bevel and just taking away material you can also do beads with it just ride the edge you can't cut curve them over you can also use the V cuts with it just coming up from the top and if you're doing beads a lot of times you start out with a V cut and then you round it over with your B and then a lot of times it's just a peri cut where you're just kind of coming along the end gonna let taking wood off so those are the main cuts I'd do with the skew gouge in skew the other tool you're going to see me use quite a bit is my Achilles heel I have more trouble with this tool than anything it out there and I'm trying a new grind on it it's a modified fingernail notice it's not it's a little bit more pointed than the fingernail and to hopefully I'll help me eliminate a few of my errors and my caches and stuff like that but I have more caches with this tool than anything I own it's just the one tool I struggle with which seems to be exact opposite of everybody else everyone else has problems with the skew whereas I have problems with this gouge and basically it operates by riding that bevel and you can do beads with it by starting out high rotating coming low or you can do codes where you start at low it rotate it to come in hot just like that and that's basically all we're going to do beads and coves now I will also use the wing of this and use it as a skew to make skewing cuts that saves me wasting away the sharpness of the edge I can use the sharpness of the sides to get rid of some bulk work if I ever need to and finally you I'll be using scrapers to doing some hollowing one will be curved with a half curve on it like that and one will be straight across but it's not at ninety degrees at a slight angle that will allow me to get inside the corners without scraping this side on the side of the box so here's a brief overview of my production method is nothing unique and this is not going to be all-inclusive I generally start out with it all marking out my centers just so that it's easier to line up the live Center and drive centers with their little pins I will start it up and then just rough it out it doesn't matter if it's a log or one of these mallets you got to get it smooth first and that's what the roughing spindle gouge is for and I will also smooth out the handle so that it will be straight and it will slide into those spigot jaws on the smaller lathe easier next is just a turning a tenant now this live Center I mean this drive Center I bought for the one-way chuck is probably the best investment I made all last year it's just changed the way I do this quite easily because it used to be I had to do a lot of measuring now I just look at the Chuck right next to it and make the tenon to fit the circle Dossi after that i chuck it up and I would do the layout and right here you can see I'm making a equal size box I'm using my fingers to divide it into thirds and then it's just parting off the top from the base so that I can slide that into my smaller lathe or in the second Chuck now you can do the same thing if you have two chucks and I just drastically prefer this because untucking wood and then testing a fit and putting it back in the Chuck you always give it off it never goes in exactly the same then just cut off a little waist slide it in the spigots and this is a very solid fit cuz there's a lot of wood there's a lot of meat inside the jaws and holds it very very well now there are lots of different ways of hollowing out the bass and I'll show you a few here well my more common ways is using a spindle gouge going straight into in green the reason why is if you're doing it this way it's kind of like spindle turning coming from the outside towards the center but you're doing it backwards you're starting in the middle and coming out so you're actually going with the grain except for that initial cut and you don't Dupree draw this is the way I do most of my demonstrations of hollowing and stuff where if I'm just making one box I prefer this way just because it is so damn fast it gets rid of a lot of material the downside is it is somewhat of a curve it's hard for me to get straight edges so after I do that one a lot of times I do the very edge with just a straight scraper just push it right in its just removing a little bit just to straighten it out and get a nice fit for the tin that's going to slide into it now notice scrapers especially on hard dry wood the edge of the bird goes away really fast it's only going to last about eight seconds what's nice it's it's really quick to put a Noopur on just head to the Griner rub it off the next way a lot of people do is using a small bowl gouge the difference between using the bowl gouge and the spindle gouge is on the bulkhead you start from the outside and working the end so in effect you are going against the grain and this results a lot times in a rougher more torn out interior finish whereas a lot of times with the spindle gouge I can just go straight to you know a 400 grit sandpaper and the finish right away other people like to put a depth gauge using a drill bit very easy to make and then you can scrape your way until you see that depth gauge go away now you can use the same technique with the spindle gouge but it's just an extra step when you're using a spindle gouge notice I like to get rid of the bottoms of my scrapers because on smaller boxes that allows you to get into a tighter fit and from there it's just scrape away it's actually very effective especially if you're starting from the center because you are going with the grain okay so I'm somewhat in production mode the easiest way for me to how about small items I mean beyond an inch or two down and I find it easier to use a spindle gouge but for small ones like this it's easier for me and just use a Forstner bit but when you're turning you really have to be careful it is very easy to overheat these even though they're high speed steel but if you start turning a blue and your turnings which isn't that hard because you can spend these kind of quickly and there's a lot of friction involved I saw dust buildup what I'm getting at is it's easy to lose a temper on these so that they will never hold a net so you really have to go slow with these and let them cool quite a bit but they're fairly simple I mean basically you have your tail stock just bring it on up lock it on down if you just put it into the tail stock when you're doing it you sometimes have to hold it bring it on up tight and then turn your lathe on make sure it is going in the right direction that's fairly slow speed hold it and then just feed it slowly beat it slowly do you not want to heat up you don't want to have to find it up because the salt off is build up what's happened sometimes whenever you go fairly deep I'm going go and go maybe 3/4 of an inch that's about it now I will tell you this I am using the wrong kind of Forstner bit for this action I'm using a type of force majeure bit that's built for your drill press and the reason why I say that is because it has a very long pilot point right there and the reason why that's there so that that will anchor into wood and if you're turning into a half of the circle is outside turning air now keep it stable but when you are turning on the lathe generally you surface it on the front and all you really need is something to somewhat get it going and this just creates a very deep hole in the base that I now to take care of with scraper so they're pluses and minuses get the right kind you can sharpen them up this should last you your lifetime if you don't overheat it next is a matter of fitting the top to the base and this is where having to Chuck's is such a luxury because normally I would have to take the base off of the old Chuck but the second piece of wood in there begin fitting it aligning it put the base back on the old Chuck removing the top and every time you remove and put back on a piece of wood in the Chuck there's a good chance it's going to get off even the best of of them out there they're always off like a half a millimeter and a half a millimeter it's all the distant difference when you need a tight top so having two chucks in a low jury having two lays is an even bigger luxury because as you saw I just spun off one Chuck and moved it over after I get it fitting pretty good I like to clean up the bottoms with a blade and my Excuse the best one if I'm wanting a flat bottom I could much do them all with a skew and on some of them I will go over I will grab a rounded scraper and just put a little dome or a decoration on the interior just a little surprise for somebody when they open up the box in with the scraper if you're wanting a finished ready surface remove the old rough bird and put a new fresh burr that's really tiny onto it to take those little nice fluffy shavings then it's a matter of rinse and repeat testing between each little millimeter of would you take off when you can get tight enough it where it holds up the Chuck you know you're doing pretty well I ought generally we'll put it back on the small lathe and remove as much of the spindle bulk as I can because there's a problem with these Jam chucks when you put them on the lathe the farther out from the actual join the torque will torque it off and sometimes the tops will spin off unless you have a perfect fit so you might as well get rid of all the bulk waste that you can when you've got it in a chuck so that when you're working with the jam fit it's less leverage acting on it some people don't like turning the base of this time I like to define my dimensions that I'm working with so I'll turn the bottom down pretty well just leaving enough there so I can actually get good leverage on the tool now when you're turning the top with that jam Chuck you got to take very light cuts you don't want that spinning off or torquing off but the cool thing is you can turn them both at the same time so you get a perfect blending and when you are far out on the finial you have to take extremely light cuts take it slow take it easy and go from there it won't it doesn't add a lot more time taking these small cuts but it does keep it all balanced and on the jam Chuck okay so we have finished the first three and I thought we take a break and we'll analyze the design of them and just kind of freeform think of what was good what is bad so as we progressed through the other ones we can make improvement so let's take a quick look at these first three so here's the first one I did and I on this one I try to stay in the two third scale where the top from the handle down to here is two thirds and from here to the base is one third to get those proportions I was talking about also I try to repeat curves if you look at it this curve along the side is somewhat repeated across the top and I try to repeat the same shape on the very top of the handle and this was a somewhat inverse of the top curve again I'm trying to repeat themes here here and here but none of them are in the same plane though I probably got this one right here a little bit too close to that one my personal opinion just a standard little box that little ring box now you're looking at this and you're thinking oh well obviously that is not perfectly measured I'm not doing this perfectly basically if I take a section basically if I take a section of something I'm just sticking my two fingers up there and that gives me one two three somewhat equal segments I'm not measuring this out to critic though I'm just kind of doing it by eye so that's where we're going so here's the first one the second one I did I inversed those proportions I made the handle from here to here roughly one third and from here to here roughly two thirds and this distance right here on all of these is roughly two thirds the top from the distance from the top to the but from the top to the bottom right but the width wise roughly two thirds and once again just a small low top and I tried to repeat elements so this top curve this button right here hopefully matched this curve right there as best I could so we have a small little vase on top of a bigger vase and the third one is quite different instead of doing an outside curve I did a interior curve both here in here I tried to repeat this entire shape right there up on the handle portion of it and I was conscious not to have any point of it whether the top the the little lip right there the box top they adds the bottom edge or even the base is edge right down there for them to line up at any point so according to my design this is probably the best one but out of the three I think I kind of like this one the best it's it seems a little bit lighter these kind of pure a lot heavier this one quite a bit heavier so there's my critique of the first batch of three data comes below tell me what you thought of them and what was done wrong okay here's the back to the next three and once again repeating themes this one was a lot rounder so I created a roundness here here and on top to repeat the size and I made sure not to repeat the dimensions anywhere I just once again a little box this one right here I experimented with instead doing curves or coves I did a taper that's roughly two-thirds to one-third a rise over run and I kind of repeated the angles here now once again these are rough guests estimates of what those measurement would be once again a low box and this one I repeated yesterday's version of this one I mean previous ones where I thought it was a little bit bulkier and even though this one has more meat to it it just doesn't appear as bulky to me but I repeated it is more angular so I added rings to it two to three rings the beads are on the side to repeat the themes try to repeat angles as much as I can this being repeated here and there once again repeating elements just not dimensions now we'll show you these two right here I screwed something up and one of mine blew up so I grabbed scraps and I tried to use the same piece of wood for the base as athenians but this one it's close to those dimensions this one was just totally off and it doesn't quite look right to me I haven't oiled these two but hey experiments are still sellable somebody will buy it and we'll go from there let's get back to it so here the next three I did this one right here I don't think I really meet met my design goals two-thirds because it looks to be about equal this distance here to the top I was thinking that this distance right here will be the visual break but it isn't the lid kind of causes a break right there so this one doesn't really meet my design goals but I did repeat themes I have inward curves and outward curves inward curves outward curves inward curves out work hurts throughout so I repeated elements I just didn't repeat dimensions or didn't repeat dimensions I think this right here is a little bit too close on this one I like this one I thought this one turned out very elegant did box wise I still need to loosen it up a little bit you kind of have to pull it apart there's a bit of a vacuum right here when you make boxes you don't want people to have to cook it this design I think people want to be able to just pick it up and have it sit there this one has a little bit of a vacuum fit but I did meet my 2/3 scale where this is one third and that's two thirds I repeated elements from the side to the top and I like this gradual curve right there I think that turned out pretty well I tried to repeat it on the top there but it came to a point instead of a finial and the last one is more of a honeypot style where once again 2/3 of it is a base and 1:30 is a cap but themes are repeated throughout with the little beads on it and repeat it on the top so once again I'm repeating elements but I'm not repeating dimensions the this one right here I do think I can't I got a little bit too close on the dimensions on the finial so it looks a little bit off to me once again on the next three we try to repeat elements and do the dimensions I'm not quite sure I got this one right this one looks more like a half and a half I was trying I thought he'd show up as 2/3 and 1/3 but not really so I didn't do too well on this one but the shape blends pretty well and it's just once again just a little box I like this one right here I thought it turned out pretty well I like how the curves from the side matches up here it's like this whole shape right here is repeated up there what I should have done is put a small bead on top to repeat that element but I didn't think of it at it at the time and just again a little box on this dicker one I do think I made this top a little heavy but that's beside the point not part of the design exercise and this one right here I kind of liked I got the nice shape one third down below and 2/3 up top and I repeated this element this curve down here and up there and got a little nicer oh gee effect so those are the next three let's get back to the lathe and get make a few more so here are the final three I probably made the lid a little bit too tight on this one because it is lifting its own weight but I have a feeling that they will loosen up after the oil dries and I put a little wax on milk somewhat lubricate them the designs once again I was going for the one third for the base and 2/3 on this 2/3 for the lid on top I do think I somewhat messed up on this one because if you notice on the top section I didn't realize it but these two points right here are somewhat in the same plane so the dimension is the same and that's something I was going trying to go against but otherwise I like the shape of this one quite a bit I really like the shape of this one it is a different style worse than tenon right but I like the shape of it but notice it is roughly 1/2 and 1/2 so it doesn't meet my design requirements which means that there's obviously that error in my theory and then here's the last one once again I like I really like the shape and if you consider this bottom section right here to be 2/3 and this thing 1/3 it makes sense but visually it really doesn't look that way it looks like this is all one piece and that's just a little bit on top but I thought this one came out pretty well I'm not sure how well it's gonna hold a ring on top but as a little box it works pretty nice now I did have four mallets it didn't turn out as solid as I thought they internal cracks I couldn't make them so these are two pieces I had over leftover materials I'll probably do the top in a walnut to make it a little bit darker this is a mesquite and this is pecan this turned out visually to look like it's half in half half in half I was going for a two-thirds and one-third but it just doesn't didn't quite turn out that way so I'll probably redo the top of this one in walnut so of all the ones we've done I think my favourites I like this design I like this design I really liked this too design I thought this round one turned out kind of cool shape wise and it met my two-thirds and one-third rule and it was an unusual shape and then I liked this one right here what's those two are very similar the ones I did not like to design wise he is once again this one I did not like that shape I didn't like this shape the triangles and coming back to my very first one that one now looks a bit odd to me after I've done these others but all in all I think the experiment produced a lot of cool-looking boxes and it allowed me to experiment so I think it's fair to say that this theory where you're allowed to repeat elements with just not dimensions and you keep it on a 2/3 scale was a failure because it's not universally true we've shown that even though my execution of the experiment probably wasn't dead-on I mean I was guessing a lot of dimension we can see that some of the ones that didn't follow those principles I think look turned out pretty good and some of the ones I did just turned out kind of weird but as an experiment it was a success because I've tried a lot of different stuff I use this as an incentive to learn to explore and to refine turning skills in the pursuit of an artistic expression but the thing is we now have experience to tweak that theory to adjust it and next time we do an experiment it might fail again but we can tweak it even further we're using the scientific method to develop artistry refine that theory it through a few more experiments and you're going to develop a style refining even further and you're going to be developing a recognizable style that's based purely on your impressions your likes your dislikes which will develop into your personal expression in your artistry I hope you enjoyed this video if you like more please visit our website worth the effort calm I big support page there I'll show you different ways you can support us so I can continue to make these and one last thing I want you remember it is always worth the effort to learn create and share with others you'll be safe in that fun

Channel: wortheffort

Views: 44,064

Rating: 4.8862143 out of 5

Keywords: wortheffort, wood turning, woodturning, spindle, box, box making, finial, fine woodworking, woodworking, design, lathe, spindle gouge, skew, bowl, mortise, tenon, tips, techniques, hollowing, ring, ringbox, ring box

Id: vpkilPGWNGQ

Length: 37min 56sec (2276 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 02 2016