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- Jan 27, 2005
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There was a recent thread started by John Terefenko about turning a round ball. I have never turned a ball before, but was interested in giving it a try at some unspecified future date. Yesterday afternoon before our club's monthly meeting (Woodturners of North Texas) I took a look at the March newsletter and saw that our President mentioned turning balls in his column as the ultimate in simple forms while also a challenge to do well. It was still about two hours before the meeting, so I quickly looked up the thread and then printed out the three sets of instructions that Al Hockenberry mentioned (as well as provided links).
Next, I rolled my Robust AB out of its storage in the garage and into my ... uh ... studio (I call my studio the "Great Outdoors" because it is outdoors -- how great it is varies with the season and right now it really is great). After quickly scanning over Al's instructions, I proceeded to mark pencil lines on a maple cylinder that I have had lying around for several years just awaiting the right purpose and I decided that if this wasn't it then it was probably destined to be a garage queen.
After this point, I sort of winged it while keeping the salient points from the instructions in mind as well as lessons learned from some real life experiences mentioned by folks like John Lucas. I am pleased to say that in a bit over an hour, I had a nice round ball sanded to 400P and ready to take to the meeting.
But, first I needed to clean up the ... uh ... studio -- a task which turned out to be a breeze because there was a breeze. Cleaning up the "artist" (that would be moi) took a bit more effort.
As usual, I made my grand entrance into the meeting a few minutes stylishly late, but still in time for show and tell. The club President was pleased that at least one person actually read his column, but not enough to overlook my late arrival. The punishment meted out to me was being assigned to the task of critiquing the turnings in the instant gallery -- not a bad gig this month as it was chock full of amazingly wonderful objets d'art.
I would like to thank John Terefenko for asking the question. Sometimes folks like me don't know enough to know what question needs asking. Many thanks to Al for his excellently written instructions as well as those written by Barbara Crockett. Finally, thanks for the other helpful comments in the thread, especially those from John Lucas.
Next, I rolled my Robust AB out of its storage in the garage and into my ... uh ... studio (I call my studio the "Great Outdoors" because it is outdoors -- how great it is varies with the season and right now it really is great). After quickly scanning over Al's instructions, I proceeded to mark pencil lines on a maple cylinder that I have had lying around for several years just awaiting the right purpose and I decided that if this wasn't it then it was probably destined to be a garage queen.
After this point, I sort of winged it while keeping the salient points from the instructions in mind as well as lessons learned from some real life experiences mentioned by folks like John Lucas. I am pleased to say that in a bit over an hour, I had a nice round ball sanded to 400P and ready to take to the meeting.
But, first I needed to clean up the ... uh ... studio -- a task which turned out to be a breeze because there was a breeze. Cleaning up the "artist" (that would be moi) took a bit more effort.
As usual, I made my grand entrance into the meeting a few minutes stylishly late, but still in time for show and tell. The club President was pleased that at least one person actually read his column, but not enough to overlook my late arrival. The punishment meted out to me was being assigned to the task of critiquing the turnings in the instant gallery -- not a bad gig this month as it was chock full of amazingly wonderful objets d'art.
I would like to thank John Terefenko for asking the question. Sometimes folks like me don't know enough to know what question needs asking. Many thanks to Al for his excellently written instructions as well as those written by Barbara Crockett. Finally, thanks for the other helpful comments in the thread, especially those from John Lucas.
