Segmented Turning - Grain Orientation Options

I'm getting ready to make another segmented bowl and here you can see I've got the first bullring put together I say first it's going to be the only one that's going to comprise the main body of the bowl this is the top surface which is not yet trimmed off you can see I've got these on even insert sticking up still but the bottom is sanded flat and that will go on the base the base is going to be this piece of bird's-eye maple now this is on the waste block which is yet to be put on the face plate and there's even a smaller waste block here which will allow me to get into the foot a little more as I turn it I've got it planned out so I know I like it a little bit smaller there it's still plenty big enough to hold the scale a bowl that I'm going to mount on it the thing is you can see that this is still very rough that's intentional because I'll put this on the face plate and turn that surface smooth rather than sand it that way there I know that this surface will be perfectly perpendicular to the axis of the lathe and then everything I put on top of it will then be square and true but something I want to point out is that if you look down the throat I hope I can give this a good view you can see that it's really not big enough to be the the actual base of this bowl that's because I planned this to have a mother layer in there and that will be of contrasting wood and I've tall ready cut the pieces out there right here I'm doubling these up on purpose for one thing I want to show you that they were cut from a plank at 45 degree and then square so you can see I cut the 45 and then I cut a square to get this piece and that just repeat the process till I had all eight pieces when you get eight pieces like this these are real simple there's these are not exotic cuts they're just 45 degrees there's many different ways to assemble these into a circle eight pieces will give you a circle but you can put them together in many different ways you can see I can choose I'm just kind of jumbling along here you see you get two square blocks and they go together and then you can do the same on the other half and draw a circle you'll still get a circle but I want to optimize the value of the wood and so I'm going to put them together now I'll put them together first and let you watch now I'm going to point out a detail that is often at best glossed over if it's even mentioned see when you do segmented turning unlike a flat board that you could put to make the interface you can avoid or at least minimize the amount of end grain that you end up with and I'll show you a detail beyond that simple statement that will help you along now let's get this centered for you so I can show you what I'm going to do you can see I've got a circle here and this has a void in the middle which is fine that's going to occur anyway because I'm going to turn it out if it wasn't already there and it gives me enough diameter to accept this and it'll be a nice contracting intersection to these laminations but now I know I want to do something a little different I'm turning these pieces not all of them and then I'm going to explain why I'm doing that now you see I still got the same circle why did I turn those pieces well if you look carefully you see the grain is running this way in this way this way all the end grain is butted up to the adjacent pieces if I don't flip this around for instance if I leave this piece like this I'll still get a circle but then as I cut that circle I've got end grain on the edge and we all know the end grain is not our friend that's why they invented so much sandpaper but you can minimize the amount of end grain by simply flipping the piece now you've still got your circle and you've minimized the amount of end grain in your final construction that's the detail I wanted to share with you now I'm going to go ahead and glue this together with some contrasting veneer much as you see I've done here and then this will go down there but first I'll make this ring glue it sand one side I will turn this surface remember this is going to go on the faceplate and this is going to be turned true to the lathe and then when I have one of these surfaces to true I'll glue that surface to here and then I'll turn that surface before I mount the ring I've still got to build another ring for what will Toby become the top lip of this bowl and I just want to show you the little detail about how to carefully keep track of your grain orientation when you're doing a segmented layup because any time you get the opportunity to avoid end grain on the edge you take that opportunity thank you you

Channel: SegmentedTurner

Views: 71,932

Keywords: woodturning, wood, turning, lathe, segmented

Id: ZFWvToGL_9k

Length: 6min 29sec (389 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 02 2013