Joe takes that other piece of Pear and makes a home ... a
Home for a Gnome!
Start out by putting the piece between centers using a spur
drive in the headstock end. Here you can see Joe cutting a tenon on one
end. This is going to be put into a scroll chuck so he can form the top of
the mushroom later. Be sure to make a clean and square tenon here!
Joe has put the mushroom tenon into the scroll chuck but
still has the tailstock up against the end. It's always best to use
the support of the tailstock whenever possible. You can see that
he's starting to form the top of the mushroom now.
Continuing to form that cap.
Everybody was waiting to see the Gnome that was going to
call this thing Home. Jon wasn't around.
(Why I give Jon such a hard time I don't know .. he's just such a good
sport about it! Hope he doesn't ban me from the place.)
The cap is roughed out and now Joe is working on roughing
out the stem.
A bit more refining of the stem and base.
The tailstock has been pulled back and out of the way.
This allows the cap to be fully formed across the top. Joe is using a
shallow gouge (spindle gouge) with a light touch here.
Pretty little ribbons of wood coming off that gouge!
This shows the hand position when making these fine cuts.
The completed cap. Mushrooms look best when they're a little
offcenter. All you have to do is just find a piece of wood that's not
perfectly round.
You can see that Joe leaves the bark on in places. It
looks great that way.
Working on the stem to get it thinner and have a good transition to the
base.
HEEERRREEEE comes the sandpaper !!!
Really get in there and make it shine.
Watch out for that scroll chuck. You can see that Joe
uses small pieces of sandpaper. Why? For one reason, he doesn't
need that much because of his fine technique with the tools. For another
reason, he doesn't want large pieces of sandpaper that'll potentially get
caught and ripped out of his hands.
A little friction polish.
Some more here and there
Part it off.
TADA
!
Hey, Jon. Where'd he go? Anybody see Jon?
And the crowd goes wild. This is a good
and quick project that gives you something to do with those small limbs
... and the Gnomes.