Woodturning - a Giant Gnome on the Lathe

so i'm doing something pretty exciting today or at least i think so so i've been making gnomes uh for a while now and uh so far to date my largest gnomes have maybe been i don't know around the average of nine inches maybe 10 10 inches tall and i have made one that was probably closer to 14 inches or something like that but it was only one it was last year it sold really quickly and so it didn't get to sit on the table for very long for folks to see it so what i'm doing today or what i'm hoping to do today uh is turn two gnomes and they're each gonna be two foot tall um so i think i'm gonna do one with a pointed hat i'm gonna do one with the top hat we'll see how that goes so you're either going to watch a cool video of me making those big gnomes or because i don't do lots of glue ups you'll get to watch the failure video when these things blow apart i think i'm okay i think i use plenty of glue and i think i surfaced them properly and yeah i think it's gonna be all right but uh this is either gonna be a really fun video of something blowing up on my lathe or of me making something really neat that uh i've wanted to make for a little while now so yeah i hope you enjoy and we'll roll the tape do [Music] so once we have it mounted on the lathe it's time to spin it up and start turning and this is slow going at first we're turning a lot of air here with this big piece i actually switched over to the axe to just chop off some of these larger chunks of the corners to save time save bigger pieces flying off the lathe it's really satisfying to take something big and square and then they turn it down into the shape that you want [Music] and it's at this point where you can start seeing it take shape get the body in the hat starting to look like a gnome i'm feeling pretty good about it at this point and i decide that i'm going to turn off the camera for a little bit and conserve some battery and then this happens how did i miss that the one clip where i wasn't recording so yeah it came apart flew off the lathe the lathe moved back three feet that direction and yeah i hate glue hopefully i can salvage it let's see what we're working with i mean it literally just flew in half you know what though i might be able to save that well here you have it folks catastrophic failure or in the words of the great bob ross a happy little accident we don't make mistakes we have happy accidents so today let's have a happy accident and see what we can make out of it because now i've got two gnomes one and two so they're gonna need some sanding they still need their noses they'll still need their beards hats torched but it didn't turn out too badly and i think what i'm gonna do is this one will be for sale and someone can set it up against the wall or on a shelf um and it you know it'll be decor all by itself and then this one i think i'm gonna use for a display either one of the stores that i carry my inventory at or at my booth so it all worked out we'll make use of the two of these two gnomes for the work of one i guess so to sand these i'm going to use one of my favorite tools an angle grinder with a flap disc attachment make short work of sanding and shaping these guys it's probably one of my favorite tools to use it does a great job and here you can see they're almost ready [Music] i like to give my hat some contrast and i don't like to use stains so wood burning is a great option to give that contrast make that grain pop [Music] it's a lot of fun too it can be a little uh i guess daunting at first to take a torch to your work though [Music] and i did have one more gnome to turn and i learned my lesson from the last one and a little bit of duct tape is going to hold this piece together believe it or not and it worked and i couldn't be happier with the way these guys turned out i think they look awesome i learned a ton from this experience and the next time i make them i know exactly what i need to do so hey drop me a comment let me know what you think and thanks for watching take it easy

Channel: Chris Poplin

Views: 5,246

Keywords: Making a gnome, Turning a gnome, Turning a giant gnome, Making a giant gnome, Woodturning a gnome, Nova 1624 lathe, How to make a giant gnome, Making a big gnome on the lathe, Busy Wren Creations, Chris Poplin

Id: l5LR39XTQgs

Length: 6min 55sec (415 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021