[Lathe turning for a second and then mayhem] [Bleep - censored] In the dozens of videos that I've made about
pattern plywood, one question has been in the comments over and over again: "What happens
when you turn it on the lathe?" Now, up until this point, I haven't had a
lathe in this shop. But recently, when I rebuilt my miter station,
I included this flip-up lathe, which means that now it's time to test out the pattern
plywood. I am new to turning, and from what I've heard,
turning plywood is pretty challenging. [Turning blank breaking] [Bleep - censored] I did spend a week with my friend Anne of
All Trades, and she taught me a whole bunch of stuff. "It's not cutting, I am going to raise this
up instead of stopping my lathe and raising my tool rest, and all that" I am still a novice, but I think I'm ready
to tackle pattern plywood, so that's what we're doing this week. I'm going to glue up a bunch of blanks, and
we're gonna finally see what happens when you turn pattern plywood on the lathe. [Intro Music] I'm testing out a whole bunch of new things
in this project, one of which is these new veneers. These come from Raw Rocket. They are beautifully dyed, and they're actually
designed for making your own custom skateboards. But in this case, I'm going to glue them to
some panels, and I'm going to use them to enhance the pattern of the pattern plywood. So, I not only chose these veneers because
they have amazing colors, but I also picked them because they're a lot thicker than the
other veneer that I was using. This veneer is 1/16th of an inch, while the
other stuff I used to use was less than 1/32nds, so it's going to show up a lot better. I cut these veneers in half and cut the panels
down to half the size so I can line both sides of each panel with each color. I build a sandwich out of all these panels,
and this is going to make for a really easy glue-up because I can just glue all the panels
together at the same time. With a bit of wax paper over the top of a
backer board I then lay the veneer on top of the backer board and on top of that, one
of the panels. I cover that panel with a generous amount
of wood glue, spreading it out with a glue spreader to make sure it's even, and then
I glue the bottom veneer on. I flip that panel over, add glue to the other
surface, and then add another veneer. I repeat that process until all four panels
are glued up. The sandwich got topped off with another backer
panel, and then I found every clamp I could in the shop and clamped this thing up and
let it dry overnight. [sped up clamping noises] [Material being routed] Between these two patterns, this is the woven
hexagons pattern, and this is the art deco pattern. And, uh, I was actually leaning towards this
until I added this colored tape. I taped out where the veneer is going to end
up, and this tape isn't perfect. It's a little bit wider than the veneer, and
it's also not quite the right colors. But it definitely gave me an idea of how these
are going to look, and I think that the Art Deco pattern looks a lot better. It's more visually digestible than this one. I think this one's going to get kind of confusing,
and this is going to look really cool wrapped around a cylinder. So this is what I'm going to go with. Let's start ripping strips and gluing things
up. I have a whole video on how to make hexagon
based patterned plywood. That's basically what I'm doing here. I'm matching this 60-degree angle and ripping
it into strips. It's a surprisingly easy process, but I describe
it better in that video, so I don't want to go too deep down that rabbit hole. The main thing is just checking to make sure
that your angles are correct. I usually like to do a sacrificial piece,
cut it into thirds, and if they fit together, then I can start ripping up all the pieces. Now the Art Deco pattern gets a couple of
triangles that I will address later but you can see I am reserving parts of these panels
to use for that application. I legitimately had to go back and re-watch my
old video in order to remember how I made this jig. Essentially, you just cut a strip of plywood
on that same angle, tape it to the fence, and butt it up against the blade. That provides a rest so you can make these
triangles that complete the pattern. Now that I have all of these components, it's
time to glue them together, and for that, I'm going to use tape. The tape not only helps me organize them before
they're glued, but it also helps me clamp them once they are glued up. I wrap the tape all the way around all of
the logs, and once they're together, I then cut them apart again and add glue. One thing that's a little bit of a challenge
with these is trying to get the right amount of glue inside of them. If there's too much glue, it's going to take
a lot of pressure to get the glue to squeeze out, and if there's too little glue, you end
up with gaps. It takes me a bit of practice, and when I
haven't done it for a while, it takes me some time to figure out exactly the right amount. So not every one of them is perfect, but they're
pretty darn good. I also really enjoyed that the glue squeeze
out was the same color as the veneer. I recently upgraded my workbench with these
vices, and it is great. In this case, I used it for a sanding panel
so it could stand off all that glue squeeze out that was on each of the logs. [Sanding noises, vacuuming and miter saw being
used] Okay, so what just happened was that I discovered
that I can actually make this into a block if I use the little scrap pieces that I thought
I wasn't able to use, that were left over from the panels that I cut. This is awesome because I can then take this
pattern and slice it up this way. All right, that's gonna fall apart. Um, take the pattern and then slice it up,
and it's going to yield a lot more. I think one thing that I'm going to have to
do is tape these together. I got a couple of them taped, and they seem
to hold together a little bit better that way. And then I can figure out some method for
the glue-up. This was honestly incredibly exciting because
I didn't think that I was going to yield nearly as much. I only had so much veneer, and these little
scrap pieces are all it took to almost double the size of the pattern, or at least add a
third to it. One thing is that the piece that I cut into
thirds before to test, I actually had to use for the scrap piece, so the outside yellow
wasn't the best, but it was enough to get the glue-up done. I could then flatten those after they dried
and build a jig. So, this is a totally new method for me of
gluing up pattern plywood, and I think it's kind of a game changer. In the past, I've cut everything into individual
tiles and then glued them up, but I'm starting to prefer the idea of just gluing a giant
log up and then slicing that up, like you know, a deli would slice up salami. So, I made two of these jigs. They're identical, and they have a little
triangle at the bottom so I can rest the pattern up against that and stand it upright when
it's done. After that, it was just a matter of gluing
each individual strip in, and making sure that they were nestled well between each color. I decided to stack the colors, so you've got
the CMYK in order, and you could see how much that extends the pattern by having these edges
in there. Imagine if they weren't there; I would have
to slice away any of that excess. Once I've got all the pieces in there, I stood
it up with both sides on and then added some ratchet straps. I was hoping the ratchet straps would provide
enough pressure, but I ended up covering it with clamps as well because I wasn't getting
the amount of squeeze out that I had hoped for. The clamps seemed to add a bit more pressure,
but I still wasn't getting a ton of squeeze out, and I just had to wait until the next
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products that they have, especially the UFO 2. So, thanks Foreo, now back to the build. It's good, it's good, it's not perfect. I was hoping to get a perfect glue-up. The one side, the side that I glued up against,
is perfectly flat, which is great. That's what I need when I bookmatch this for
the big turning. I can glue onto this face. This face is pretty chattery, and there's
a big gap. I think the proof of concept is there, it
does work. This is a cool way to glue up a big block,
and I think if I did it another time, I could probably nail it. But I don't have any more veneer left, so
this one's gonna have to work. Let's see what happens. So, I pretty much made as much patterned plywood
out of those veneers as I could, and the nice thing is I had a little bit of extra. So, it was enough to test out if I can cut
thin veneers out of this, and honestly, very successful. The hero of this is, of course, the new Harvey
Bandsaw, which is a major upgrade from my previous bandsaw. It just allows me to get these beautifully
straight resawed pieces. After that, I moved over to the fence and
cut a wider piece. This is going to be used to test the lathe
before I do the big turning. Then, I divided the remainder of the block
in half so that I could bookmatch it and glue it up for a massive blank. It looks so good! All those concerns that I had about the gaps
seem to have gone away once you get to the center of it. I just cannot believe how good it looks in
the center. I'm feeling a lot more confident about putting
it on the lathe. The veneers worked great. I just wanted to test this out so that the
next time, I can see... I mean, these are an eighth of an inch, so
I can make these all day. We could cut a huge amount out of this block. This is just for future me, so that I know. But these are for now me, and I'm gonna glue
this one together, and I'm gonna turn this one on the lathe. I'm just... I'm so excited. This is awesome. At this point, I have no idea how pattern
plywood is going to perform on a lathe. So, I decided, rather than going for the big
blank, to start with a smaller one. If successful, this will be a new handle for
my table saw. I drilled a hole in the blank and roughed
up the sides of a bolt. I'm going to be epoxying this in, so I cut
off the head of the bolt with an angle grinder and mixed up some TotalBoat High-Performance
Epoxy. Whoops, don't need that much. As I panicked and tried to figure out what
to do with all the excess epoxy, I ended up just scraping it off into one of those Rockler
glue trays. Then, let it sit overnight. The next morning, I trimmed off the corners
to make the turning a little bit easier. I threaded on a nut and a coupling, locking
the two of them together. This is just going to extend the length of
the handle so that it's easy to turn on the lathe and grip a little bit better. Also, it'll prevent me from damaging those
threads. With the blank prepared, I can put it into
the Nova Chuck and I just tightened the jaws around that bolt. It worked great. This Nova Chuck is kind of like a multi-tool. You can use it for all sorts of different
turnings. You're going to see me use it in a couple
different ways throughout this video. Face mask on, it was time to start the turning. And as soon as I got started, I swear I forgot
everything that I knew and had been taught. I kind of futzed around, trying to figure
out the right angles to cut at, and it just takes a little while when you're learning
a new craft to get your hands to do what your brain knows you should do. One thing, looking back at this footage, is
that a lot of the cuts that I'm making are pulling towards me, and I'm not really sure
why I was doing that. You'll see as I get more comfortable with
this blank, I start pushing forward and cutting a lot deeper. And I think I just kind of found the bevel,
and it's really hard to describe until you actually have the tool in your hand and are
cutting away material. Now you can see I'm getting the hang of it,
and it's moving a lot smoother. I'm more used to using the tool rest properly,
and it's just getting a lot easier to cut too. I think having it in round also makes a big
difference, and I started feeling more and more confident. However, confidence can lead you to do some
stupid things, and I thought that this thing could be unsupported because it seemed so
stable while I was turning it. Well, the instant I got a catch the thing
snapped. Fortunately, it was very easy to re-glue. So, when I went back, I put the tailstock
back up to it, and then I decided to use the skew chisel to get a little bit closer than
I had before removing that tailstock. To get the finish on the end of it, I just
played it safe and used some sandpaper. I got one of these multi-roll sanding packs
from Rockler, and it's pretty awesome, especially for spindle turning. It's the right size sandpaper, and you can
go through your grits really easily just tearing off what you need. There's this finishing technique that I've
always wanted to try, and I've seen loads of people do it, but you need a lathe in order
to do it, and it's best for spindle turnings like pins and stuff. So, this is a CA glue finish. I used Star Bond, and I started with their
thin finish and then filled in all the gaps with the thin. From that point forward, I started using medium
and built up nine layers of the medium on top of that thin, and then polished it back
with micro mesh pads. And it gives you this crazy shiny finish. Oh my God, that is insane! Look at the glow, look at how it changes. I'll post the tutorial that I took to do that
finish. It was really impressive, and I just can't
believe how shiny I got it in such a short amount of time. After that, I removed the lock nuts and tested
the fit on the table saw. Alright, well, I learned quite a bit from
this little handle turning. I think I got a better grip on how to use
the tools, and I also think I made some new decisions on how to use this block. One thing that I didn't like is that the blue
didn't really show up that well on this. Most of it got turned away, and that's gonna
happen again when I try to turn this into a bowl. So, what I think I can do is I'm going to
cut these black ends off, glue them on top here, and then cut it into a bowl blank. So, cut it into a circle and then pop it on
the lathe. I think that's going to make it easy and look
a lot better. So, let's get started on that. I'm nervous. I've never turned a bowl, and this seems like
the worst way to learn, but we're gonna give it a go. It's funny, I feel like every time I work
with pattern plywood, I learn something new. And this time, it's a lot about saving and
reusing materials, and also just maximizing its yield. Because pattern plywood is time-consuming,
and the veneers aren't necessarily inexpensive. They're about eight bucks a piece. So, I wanted to use every bit of it in this
turning. And the fact that I've gone from these hexagon
shapes to almost a perfect cube is, I think, really impressive. And that totally changes the way that I think
about making pattern plywood, especially for carvings and turnings. This is a very efficient way to build them. So, after my experience truing up the handle,
I decided to cut as much of the excess away from the blank as possible so I didn't have
to spend a bunch of time truing it up. I ended up with all these interesting shavings. If you've got an idea of how to use them,
please let me know in the comments down below. In order to get started on this bowl, I'm
going to screw in this faceplate, which is going to allow me to get it onto the lathe. Now, this will be the inside of the bowl,
the side with the screws. So, I'll turn away any of the thread marks
and the holes from the screws. I got it set up on the lathe and pretty quickly
moved in my larger tool rest. My small tool rest wasn't quite the right
size. I got this larger tool rest from Rockler after
talking with Anne about my last turning, which I kept having to move the tool rest back and
forth. Also, you'll notice the confidence of the
cut and how I'm pushing forward through the cut. It worked so much better, and I got this smooth
really quick. "I just sharpened it, and it's so nice. Oh my God!" "Oh, that's so clean! Oh yes!" I love the way it's warping, like it pulls
it into the vortex." The gouge would cut really well as long as
it was sharp, and this plywood definitely made it dull pretty quick. It was interesting, I could actually use the
heat from the tool to determine whether it was getting dull or not. I mean, you could tell that the cut wasn't
going as well, but sometimes you start pushing a little bit harder, so in my hand that was
supporting the cut, I could just feel the heat start to transfer through the metal,
and that let me know that it was time to sharpen again. I think I am going to stop because I really
like how these sides are looking right now, and if I go too deep, I'm going to lose some
of this effect. I love how it warps and wraps around. I put a little bit of a dip in here so it
sort of, you can see it on the edge there. Give it a little bit of something. Yeah, I really like that a lot. So, I think I'm going to put the tenon in
the bottom, and then I can flip it around and do the scary bit of hollowing it out from
the inside. Now, here's where we're going to use the Nova
Chuck again. And you have two choices when it comes to
supporting a bowl. You can either do a tenon or a mortise. The tenon sticks out, the mortise goes in. I decided to go with a mortise because I wanted
to maximize the pattern plywood on the outside. If you go with a tenon, you have to shave
away some material. To make the mortise, I tested a bunch of the
different tools that I now have, and the carbide ones seem to work the best. This is the carbide gouge from Rockler, and
it just cut really cleanly in that center section. It worked well all the way up until I got
to my outside line, and then I needed something like the skew chisel to get inside of there. I need like a dovetail in there for the Nova
Chuck to hold on to. So, the Nova Chuck has a big ringed gear on
the inside of it, and so you can either expand that gear or contract it, and it pulls the
faceplate in and out. So, depending on what you attach to it, you
can either expand into a mortise or contract onto a tenon. With the bowl removed from the lathe, I can
take off the faceplate and then put it back on the lathe in the opposite direction. Now I have access to hollow out the inside. Again, when I turned the lathe on, I was back
to not really knowing what I was doing. I didn't know how to place my hands, I didn't
know how to engage the gouge, but I just experimented until it started working. I watched dozens of videos and talked to a
number of bowl turners, but again, until it's in my hands, it was really hard to know how
it felt. And in comparison to turning the outside,
the inside was much more difficult. It was just a lot of material to remove, and
it was dense, and it took a lot of time to get through all of it. I really wanted to learn how to use the bowl
gouge, so I stuck with the bowl gouge for the majority of this, but I did end up having
to switch in the end. It took a lot of sharpening. I think I sharpened probably every 10 minutes
or so, and I spent several hours doing this. But the effects and changes in the pattern
made it incredibly worth it and really enjoyable. Oh! Go through the pink, alright, making progress. [Music] Something grabbed about halfway through the
pink. I got my first catch, and I thought it broke
the lathe, to be honest. "Oh, I see." It got pulled out of the chuck. [Music] After the catch, things started going a lot
smoother, and gradually I got deeper and deeper, revealing more and more of the pattern. One thing I did run into is that as I got
deeper into the bowl, I had trouble getting the bowl gouge to cut. I think it has to do with my grind, but rather
than regrind the tool or do a double bevel on the tool, I decided instead to switch over
to the carbide tool, which I knew would work. The carbide tool cut great. It actually probably did a lot better and
quicker with no sharpening, but it didn't leave nearly as good of a finish as the bowl
gouge. [Music] I got really relaxed in the cutting process,
and things were going smooth until they weren't. "Excuse my French, I just blew out the bottom
of this thing. No, that might be it." "There's a lot of tear-out back here. Maybe I can get a grip on it again. I'll give it another go." Well, that I was certain was the end of the
bowl, but it actually turned out to be okay. I had enough meat left on the bottom of it
to hold onto the chuck, and I just took my time from that point forward. No aggressive cuts. I was determined, though, to get all the way
down to the bottom of the pattern, all the way to the black layer. Oh yeah, it's so deep, you can't even see
in there. At this point, I was really at the edge of
what my tool rest could do, but I saw the black pattern and I wanted to finish it off. This was actually a cool process because every
time I stopped to lay the pattern changed, and I just chose to finish when I was happy
with the way the pattern looked. "Yeah, I think that's it. That's a terrible idea." So I know everybody wants to see the final
shots of the bowl, and we're getting to that. But I have a really exciting announcement. This is something that I've been working on
for the last three years. I've been working with my buddy Akil to figure
out a way that we can provide patterned plywood to you. You may have taken a poll recently asking
what your favorite pattern of pattern plywood is and what size you could use in your shop. I get emails all the time from people saying,
"I would like to use pattern plywood in a project, but I just don't have the tools or
I don't have the space or the time or the access to the materials." And so, I've made these available for pre-sale
now. These are 8.5" x 11" x 0.5" thick, and we
have four different patterns. They are sanded up, ready to go. They don't have any finish on them, so they're
not quite as shiny. But you can still see, when they are shined
up, how much the pattern is going to come through. I am so excited about this. We even were able to get the dragon scale,
and it is flawless. I cannot wait to see what you guys make with
this. So cool! So, almondfab.com, go check out, sign up for
the pre-sale, order yourself some panels that you can use in your projects. And thank you for watching. I'm gonna get to the final shots. Thank you to Foreo for sponsoring this video,
and thank you, as always, to my Patreon supporters. You guys are the best, and I'll catch you
in the next one.
