ARTICLES & REVIEWS

  Like many beginning turners I have long admired turned Christmas tree ornaments. I have seen them each year in magazines and on the internet forums, I have always wanted to try to make one. Well My answer came this fall, the Burlington Lee Valley store offers courses weekly on a wide variety of topics, taught by either staff or local woodworkers who are recognized as being very good at what they do. I spied early in September that a local wood turner Mike Sheppard would be teaching turning of Christmas tree ornaments and I was signed up in an instant.

  The big day arrived this past weekend (December 6, 2003) and I was very excited about the class. Lee Valley provided all the materials including a lunch, for a grand sum of $40 (all of which Lee Valley donates to the United Way). I ran into a Forum Woodworking friend at the course as well, Kelly Marr, we shared a lathe and some of the pictures I am presenting here for explanation will show his ornament in process as well as mine.

  Mike walked us through the process, he was excellent with his instruction (and humor), his hands on approach with each of us was a great learning method. The basics of turning an ornament is simple, turn and hollow a ball, turn an icicle and a finial cap….insert a hook and you are done.

  I took my digital camera with me to the class and below follows a series of images with some words to describe and demonstrate the process. As I found out there are a variety of ways to do this, but you can start with waste blocks glued up with the wood you want to turn for the ball, here are some examples.

We were taught that we could use either a chuck mount or a face plate mount.

I turned the blank round and rounded off the front. Then I rounded the ball shape to the back. Finally, I sanded the shape and applied a turning finish.

  The next step was to drill a hole with a forstner bit. I drilled a 5/8" hole to a depth about 1/4" less than the ball diameter. This acts as the depth stop for the hollowing process. Then hollow out the ball to a thickness just less than 1/4". We used a scraper that Mike had made, it looked like the one in the picture.

  Once we had the ball hollowed, we used a fancy hand made wire gauge to measure the ball wall thickness.

  After we were happy with the hollowing of the ball, we used the same forstner bit and drilled completely through the ball into the waste block. We parted the ball off the waste block, careful to use a thin parting tool to shape the ball as it was removed.

  The next step was to turn a jam chuck for the ball so that we could sand and finish the parted surface.

  I applied finish to the fresh surface, and the ball is done.

  Now we go to work on the icicle and cap finial. The stock we worked with was glued into a waste block.

  Chuck the waste block in the lathe, then lay out the stock, turn it round, and use a parting tool to turn a 5/8" tenon.

  Turn, sand and finish the icicle, then part it off and try it for fit in the ball.

  Finally, turn the cap finial, add a 5/8" tenon, and drill a small hole for the tiny eye screw. Glue the finial and the icicle to the ball and...

You are done!

  I was very happy with my first attempt at this. I was also inspired by the others in the class. Your imagination is the limit here.

This ornament is a cherry ball with a cocobolo icicle, it's about 6 inches tall.

Al Crandall:   Great looking finished ornament. If I may, allow me to suggest a slight change which will simplify the process a bit. After you are done hollowing the ball, instead of parting it off, continue to shape the outside until the ball is held by a tenon of about 7/16 diameter. Do all the sanding and application of your finish. Now use a 1/2 diameter Forstner bit to drill into the waste and the ball will be "parted" from the inside. This eliminates the extra work of turning the jam chuck and finishing the newly parted off area. It also allows the top piece to be attached with a smaller tenon which makes the ornament a bit more dainty. If you want real daintiness, turn the holding tenon to slightly smaller than 3/8 diameter and then part it off using a 3/8 diameter Forstner bit. I have not made a lot of these, but this is how I do them.

^© 2003 by Jim Shaver . All rights reserved.
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