practice ornament

that takes a steady hand!

GaryG in MD

Nice form, Keith. ...GG

Re: practice ornament

charlie belden

Purple heart is pretty open grained and tricky to turn to small and delicate. Takes a sharp cutting edge - fine motor skills and great eye hand coordination.

Nice, nice, very nice.

Re: practice ornament

john Lucas

All right, now your getting down to my scale. Excellent details.

Re: practice ornament

John K Jordan

Very nice. Did you glue them up all at once? If so, what kind of glue gave enough working time to assemble and clamp that many pieces of veneer? (Or is that something like Dymondwood?)

Re: practice ornament

Doug Ladendorf

Beautiful form and detail. Quite a nice "practice" piece!

Doug

Re: practice ornament

Barry Rockwell

Wow Keith, that would be beautiful and impressive even if it was "normal" size.

Practice???

Don Orr

I don't think you need any more practice Keith. Looks like you have this turning thing figured out pretty well.

Extremely beautiful.

Re: practice ornament

Dennis in Southern Oregon

Beautful in all respects Keith. You are getting an early start this year. Keep practicing and soon you will be able to turn full size ones.

Re: practice ornament

Keith Tompkins

Thanks everyone! John, I glued panels up 6" square and about 1/2" thick at a time using titebond. This is a small leftover piece, turned round, hollowed, and then added to another piece that had been hollowed to form the globe.

Re: practice ornament

Dick Coers

Very nice Keith. Very nice sheen on the ornament. I lost the first finial ornament this year at a gift show. I always expected it, but this was the first one.

Another Beauty, Keith!

Thinking about proportions

Dick Coers

Looking at he picture again Keith. Have you done any with bigger spheres? Can't help but think that with that much finial length, it could handle a much larger sphere. Maybe not in the height of the sphere, but in the diameter? I'm thinking the finial just seems to over power it.

Re: Thinking about proportions

Keith Tompkins

Dick, you are right on the money! Too often we let the piece of wood dictate the results; in this case, I wanted to use the laminated veneers to create the globe. So, I was stuck with the largest diameter I could get out of that piece of scrap, rather than find the appropriately sized piece to fit the finial. So, I took an existing finial, and married the two pieces. As I posted on the WOW site, the globe should have been bigger.

You bring up an important point...too often we look at our work and think "this is very good", but don't look with a critical eye. I think it's important to see our work as it really is, trying to find room for improvement. Make each new piece better than the first. If one cannot do that, they risk getting stuck forever in the same spot. Thanks for your observation!

Re: Thinking about proportions

Keith Tompkins

I stretched out the globe image....better?

Much better to my eye!

Dick Coers

Looks great.

There was a time when I thought people were going crazy with finials on hollow forms. I made the comment then that the hollow form looked like a fancy way to display a finial!

Re: Thinking about proportions

Bill Blasic

Like!