A bit of spindle work to share today from Jay Scott.
First, a log of cedar given to me when a friend removed it from their yard, a few years ago. They recently moved to a new place and I made a little decoration from a piece of that limb. It is a tealight holder, or a sculpture, or wherever needs a little whimsy. It was turned off center to expose the wood, sanded, painted with gold and red Unicorn Spit, sealed with countless aerosol clear coats.
This second one is much more precise than the cedar log. Since I bought this curly maple, while on holidays in 2019, I knew it was going to be for something special. It wasn’t until I had my lathe bed extension that I was able to make this handle. I needed the length in order to drill deep enough into the tool handle to fully accept the steel from a double ended OneWay bowl or spindle gouge. The length of the ferrule added a nice bonus length.
I wasn’t done there, so I flipped it around and drilled out a ballast chamber, using a 3/8″ nut epoxied in and a bolt to close the chamber. I may turn a cap for it, but for now it’s great as is. The plan is to use this with my spindle gouge, primarily, secondarily for a gooseneck carbide tool for hollowing. The beads near the top may be wrapped in leather or paracord, if I need the extra grip when taking it off or putting it on the rack.
At 360mm, over 14″, the handle was turned and sanded to 320 grit, dyed with Keda powdered dyes applied by airbrush. I sealed it with about 15 coats of wipe on poly, applied by airbrush and then polished it with Yorkshire Grit, regular and microfine.
That first scratch hasn’t happened, yet. Don’t make your handles too fancy or you’ll forget they’re tools to be used to make art, not necessarily art, itself.
