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Knowledge You Can Build On — Est. 1998

Turned boxes class

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Turned boxes class

#1

Turned boxes class

Walt C

>I took a neat class this week with Alan Lacer on turned wood boxes with lids. Highly recommend it if you are interested and he's in the area.

All five of us students were fairly novices, and he did a good job of scaling his presentation to his audience.

He was interesting, fun, and supportive of our novice efforts--all the things a good teacher should be.

I got a fairly crude poplar box out of the deal, and a lot of learning.

It was almost worth the price of admission to see him go at rounding a square billet with a skew--the chips just flew!

Standard disclaimer..no affiliation or interest in selling classes...

Walt C

Re: Turned boxes class

#2

Re: Turned boxes class

Charles Bjorgen

>I also took Alan Lacer's class on lidded box turning a couple years ago. Turning boxes is now one of my favorite lathe projects. I've also taken his class for beginning turners and his class on using the skew. While I'm still no skew expert, his class at least took the fear out of trying that tool more frequently.

Alan lives in western Wisconsin, which is local to our Minnesota club in the Twin Cities, so we get to see a lot of him here.

Re: Turned boxes class

#3

Re: Turned boxes class

Edward

>Did Alan say anything about his signature skews that are sold by Craft Supplies? The 5/8 inch skew is 3/8 inch thick and comes with a huge handle and I wonder why he designed such a heavy duty skew. Does he use it in some special way that it needs to be that robust. The handle on the one that I received is 16 inches long, which seems to be a pretty hefty handle for a 5/8 inch skew.

He also has a bigger skew 1 and 3/8 inch,I think, and I can see the requirement for this big skew to be a big, robust tool. I am just wondering about the smaller skew.

Re: Turned boxes class

#4

Re: Turned boxes class

Walt C

>No, but he did a stunt that still makes me smile. Egged on by someone from the store, he put a small piece of wood in a jacobs chuck, and had at it with a skew that was at least an inch, probably 1 1/4". Handle stuck out way beyond his elbow. He had his face right up to the work, and he fussed and cut, then cut off the piece--a top. But the darn thing was less than 1/8" high, and the round part was the size of an "o". Not a capital o either.

He claimed it did spin (true) and that he had signed it (well...). But it sure was a demonstration of fine work with clunky tools.