Some time ago I bought a block of spalted beech, mainly because it seemed fairly cheap and I was on a spending spree in a wood turning suppliers. But it was a slightly awkward shape and for some reason I decided that I would make a few things out of it by chopping it into a few pieces. the first piece was about 65mmx65mmx200mm

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about making a spinner box, and sticking with it even after making a pretty bad mistake. The final item may not be what I intended, but it worked out ok.

A couple of weeks ago Kat and I went to Cyprus for a week. The main reason for going was the wedding of some friends, and so there were actually a fairly large group of friends, many of whom also IBMers, also going for the same period. This was the first time I’ve really done a non-UK holiday with friends. I had a really good time, it was extra fun to have a bunch of friends around, and the wedding was really very nice – it was a great location.
Obviously I took my N900 with me, but was trying to avoid paying the crazy data prices so it spent most of off-line. However I took my TV out cable and loaded it up with some encoded DVDs and lots of music. During the time there, I got lots of great use out of the FM transmitter and the ability to just plug into the TV in the villa and provide music and movies. These are features of the n900 that I don’t really use at home, but really came into their own in this holiday situation.

This week I spent a lot of time updating witter, so yesterday I redressed the balance and spent some quality time in the workshop.

At the hwa meeting in February Mark Baker demonstrated an interesting arched stand with finialed box. I figured I would have a go at making one. I sliced up a chunk of spalted beech on my bandsaw to provide the arch. Mark had ebonised his arch and left the box contrasting, I thought I’d try the other way around, since the spalted beech was so interesting.

I decided to glue a spiggot on to help hold it and use the tailstock to pin everything in place whilst I turned the outside profile.

I refined the outside profile and cut a recess that would ultimately be the hole my box sat in. But would also allow me to reverse the piece and expand my 4 jaw chuck into the recess to turn the underside.

Here you can see that it’s quiet easy to judge thickness because it’s ‘winged’ you can see a translucent effect of the wings seeing the outside and inside profile

This made life fairly easy and at 2000rpm it was fairly smooth cutting despite big sections of any rotation being free air.

It’s fair to say I was feeling pretty pleased with myself as things were going well.
Then, just as I was reaching my desired thickness, just as I cut through the bottom of the recess…BANG! it exploded off the chuck, hitting the back wall and shattering in to smaller pieces.

At times like these I am glad I wear a full face shield. Not that anything hit me, but it’s easy to see how it could have. Always wear protection!

So far I’ve only actually found half of the pieces, I have no idea where the other half went.

Clearly the wood was simply not strong enough against the expansive force of the chuck once I’d removed most of the weight of wood.

And Mark made is look so easy….