Wooden Teapot Project

[Michael Anderson]

Hi everyone,

I started a new project yesterday, and figured it might be fun to share the process. Follow along!

The River Art Gallery in Chattanooga is hosting a Tea Pot Exhibit during the months of November and December. I am contributing one or two teapots (if I can finish the second in time). I've never made a teapot before, but it's been on my to-do list for a while. A couple of months ago, Malcolm Zander posted this photo of his incredible Pearl Grey #2 Teapot on the World of Woodturners forum:



Though I have no intention of making one in this style, nor could I achieve his level of piercing precision, it was beautiful enough that it inspired me to cross teapot off of my list.

Yesterday, I mulled around ideas for a while, and then hit the lathe running with a piece of green Bradford Pear. I roughed out a shape, and then changed it, and then changed it again, until I was left with something that looks okay. That will be my second teapot I contribute to the exhibit, if I manage to finish it in time. The reason I mention that one, is that through the process of changing the form, and changing it again, I decided that I should probably do a better job with planning. A teapot has a variety of components, and isn't quite suited for winging it (at least not as much as other objects). So, last night after I put the kids to sleep I spent a lot of time looking at wooden, ceramic, metal teapot shapes, and eventually stumbled upon the following chart of traditional Chinese tea pots. I follow a number of traditional Chinese and Japanese ceramic teapot makers on Instagram, and generally like the shapes and designs they achieve, so that was the start of finding this chart:

For this teapot, I decided to go for a variation of the Ban Wa shape (2nd column, 7th row). I chose this partly for the unique look, partly for the form that will support my planned embellishments, and partly because it has some fun problem solving involved. Note: this is a new form for me, so the process you see in this thread may or may not be the most efficient. But, we'll (hopefully) be successful in the end! The next step was to find/buy some lumber. I have some flat stock drying, but don't have a long timeline (object photos must be submitted to the gallery by 1 October), so I went out after work this morning to buy some lumber. I settled on a piece of 8/4 Sapele from Woodcraft.



Not cheap, but I should have quite a bit left over to use for some project 10 years down the road . I chose Sapele because it has fine interlocking grain (this will help with the handle and spout, as well as some of the embellishment), and has a nice rich color when finished. My teapot should be around 3.5" wide when finished, so the 8/4 dimension is perfect.

After I brought the wood home, I used a compass to mark out an appropriately sized circle on the board (85mm radius), and then marked the same size circle on a sheet of stiff paper. This will be my template and reference. Following that, I determined the appropriate height for my teapot body. The Ban Wa shape seems to be a bit taller than the radius of the circle, so I played around with a couple of options (folded my paper) until I found something that looked pleasing (settled on 107mm height):



The above image already includes my cuts, because I decided to do the follow along after the next step. This entailed cutting out my partial circle, and then tracing the shape and cutting out a mate. I then cut out a couple of strips of paper, 3" and 3.5" wide, to check proportions (settled on 3.5" wide), and assembled my paper teapot body (sans floor). Ignore the doodles:



The next step is to create this on the lathe. Stay tuned!

 

[Michael Anderson]

Creating the body of the teapot involves a process similar to making a two-piece hollowform. I cut two pieces of my Sapele board to size, found the center, and mounted each in a friction chuck setup (here, a block of wood in a chuck, turned true and face flattened, with some rubber-ish drawer liner to increase grip):



Turn each block round, and add a tenon to one face (you can use a bandsaw to rough the blank round if desired, but you'll still need to true it on the lathe). I'm using standard jaws, so I sized my tenons at 55mm. Also be sure to turn the tenon side of your face fairly flat. It's not crucial at this point, but will help keep everything tidy in future steps. I used a metal ruler to check for spaces and get "close enough" for now. The specific diameter of each piece isn't critical, but you do want to make sure that you leave each piece large enough to maintain your desired final size (you can see in the following photo that my piece on the right is slightly larger in diameter than the one on the left).



Chuck up the first blank, flatten the rough face (tailstock side), and mark the center with a pencil and make a small indention with a skew (or similar tool). I then used dividers to scribe a line (and a pencil to mark each line) at the final diameter (170mm diameter, or 85mm from the center point). This isn't crucial (it will soon be turned away), but gives you a nice reference point. I also marked a line 80mm from center and an additional line at 75m from center. The latter two lines indicated the boundary of the male portion of the upcoming joint.



Following the line layout, I turned the exterior at the 80mm line so that I created a rabbet/shoulder 1 cm deep. This means that I will have a 5mm x 10mm overlap to my future joint. Should be plenty of surface area to maintain a strong permanent connection between my two halves. Be very careful to maintain a 90 degree angle with your shoulder. You want the two body pieces to fit as tight/flush as possible. Here is the blank after creating the rabbet/shoulder:

 

[Michael Anderson]

In the meantime, after spending a bunch of time looking at my paper form, I decided it looked a bit too chunky, and went with a 3" overall width. Here is a shot with the 3" paper strip in place, instead of the 3.5" strip. Small size decrease, but big overall effect (to my eyes).



Back to the lathe! The next step was to drill a pilot hole to depth. I used a 1/2" Forstner bit and drilled a hole 38mm deep. This put me ~10mm from the back of the blank (which will be a sidewall of the teapot), which will result in equal (ish) walls for the entire teapot body (recall from above, my joint will have a 5mm male and 5mm female portion).



Following drilling the pilot hole, I turned away the rest of the interior to my pencil line, keeping the 5mm wide tenon. I did the majority of the hogging out with a bowl gouge, but switched to a large scraper to flatten the back surface. I didn't bother with getting a pristine surface, but I did make sure everything was square and even.



That's it for the male side for now. Time to prep the female side. I started by mounting the blank in my chuck and then marking a two lines: one 85mm from the center to indicate final diameter, and the other 80mm from center to indicate the female portion of the joint.

 

[Michael Anderson]

Following laying out the reference lines, I turned part of the interior away to my closest reference line. The sizing here is critical, so I first made some cuts that were at too small of a diameter, and then snuck up to my line. I checked the fit several times with my male-side blank. Once I had the correct diameter, I turned away a recess that was just a bit deeper than 10mm. Although my tenon from before was 10mm long, I wanted the recess to be a bit deeper for two reasons: 1) the two blank need to seat together tightly and I couldn't risk being short, and 2) the extra depth gives excess glue a bit of room to escape. I also used a ruler to ensure my cut was square on the side (sort of like aligning your tool rest, place the ruler along the inner wall and compare it with the ways--if the ruler and ways are parallel, you know your wall is square).



I then drilled a depth hole as before, but this time 28mm deep (instead of 38mm). This accounts for the 10mm overlap--28mm will give me a final sidewall thickness for this side of ~10mm. After I drilled the pilot hole, I turned away the remaining interior of the blank as before (bowl gouge and scraper to finish). Note: I kept a 5mm wide shoulder in the interior so that I would have 10mm thickness all the way around (with a slight gap between this shoulder and the tenon) as mentioned above.



Next was the moment of truth, the glue-up. Fortunately, everything fit tightly. I used Titebond II, and then clamped my two pieces together for several hours.



I then removed the clamps, mounted the hollow cylinder on the lathe and turned the edge down to size.



The next step will be to refine the curved edge so that it is perfectly flat (or as close to perfect as possible) and finished nicely. I will then turn off the tenons and single shoulder so that I have a nice cylinder. Following that, some fun begins. Stay tuned!

 

[Gabriel Hoff]

Looks great so far! Very interesting, It seems like it needs to be very precise.

 

[Michael Anderson]

Looks great so far! Very interesting, It seems like it needs to be very precise.

Thanks Gabriel! Precise, for sure. For the body, the more symmetrical and square the better. Partly for aesthetics, and partly for the next few steps to work well. The handles and spout will be a little bit more free form. 😃

 

[Russ Braun]

Nice job Michael! I’ve been eagerly awaiting the next follow along project, thanks for stepping up!!

 

[Will Armstrong]

Very well documented Michael! Thanks for putting so much energy into it. This is the first follow along project that I am following along in real time. Can't wait for the next episode

 

[Michael Anderson]

Thanks guys!

Russ, I have another one planned for SWT after this. Has some “real segmenting” involved 😂 makes me nervous, but I think it’ll be fun.

Will, haha, tell Netflix to throw some money my way. Never know if/when disaster drama will happen 😉

 

[Steve Saah]

This is a fantastic thread so far as a teapot has been a project on my list to try for quite some time. You’re a great inspiration @Michael Anderson !

 

[Michael Anderson]

This is a fantastic thread so far as a teapot has been a project on my list to try for quite some time. You’re a great inspiration @Michael Anderson !

Thanks a lot Steve! It's fun to do these in real time--always hoping for the best. We'll see what happens

 

[Michael Anderson]

Prior to turning the curved edge of the teapot flat, I put on two coats of 1# shellac. This stiffens the fibers, and give me the best chance at getting everything flat with minimal tearout. Sapele's grain is interlocking and can be a bit finnicky sometimes. Every bit helps. It was also a good excuse to get a little preview of the wood's grain popping.



Once the shellac dried, I start to carefully turn the edge away. I used a spindle roughing gouge and light passes. Though this isn't the preferred orientation for a roughing gouge, it is the ideal tool for minimal tearout and extremely light passes. I kept my tool rest close to the wood, handle low, and flute askew. Perfect. Once the edge looked flat, I checked it with a ruler and some backlight. The following is a photo of my initial view (top) and my final view after refining (bottom). A tiny bit of light still shone through, but that was good enough.



I then grabbed some 180g sandpaper and backed it with a piece of flat hard wood to finish refining. I also check the diameter from one end to another to ensure everything was flat and equal. Following this I flipped my blank around in the chuck and turned away the excess material on the other side.I kept the tenon for now, but will not need to remount this side in the chuck (hence not leaving a shoulder).



Following this, I put a coat of shellac on most of the blank's surface to protect it from glue in a later step. Then it was time to mount the blank so that I could turn a hole for the lid. This was a bit of a problem-solving challenge. I first determined where I wanted the lid to be--I chose to position the lid in an endgrain section with a nice straight-grained section in front (grain is straight and parallel in both halves). The endgrain position will be helpful for the insert I will make later. Once I determined the lid position, I used an awl to make an indention for my live center in the center of the blank (this was easy enough--the glue line is in the center). Following this I marked a line running across the edge, and used this line as a reference to mark a center line 180 degrees from the first (on the other side of the blank). I then put a piece of wood in my chuck and flattened the face to make a glue chuck. I drew a line running across the center. To ensure that my blank was oriented perfectly, I aligned the line I drew on the bottom of the blank with the line I drew on the face of the glue chuck. I also used calipers to make sure the blank was centered on the glue chuck side to side. It took a bit of fiddling, but all of these precautions ensured my blank would be centered and true on three axes (not easy with a round bottom). Here is a photo showing the alignment of the two lines (the camera distorted the image slightly, so it looks like the tailstock mark is a bit off):

 

[Michael Anderson]

To affix the blank to the the jam chuck, I first superglued a couple of pieces of wood onto the glue chuck to support the sides of the teapot body. I then used hot melt glue to secure the blank to the wooden supports and the glue chuck. I glued a wedge on each rounded side to provide support. Then, I added more hot glue everywhere that made sense.



I let the glue cure for several hours. Hot glue is incredibly strong and reliable, and even though the above image looks a bit sketchy, the blank is fairly secure. Light, intentional, confident cuts are the key to keeping everything in place. First, I drilled a pilot hole with a 1/2" Forstner bit--this was exciting, as it was my first view of the hollow.



After drilling the pilot hole I grabbed my 3/8" bowl gouge and made light exploratory cuts until I was satisfied with the size of the opening. I wanted a wide opening, but did not want to go all the way to the side wall, so I stopped when I was about 1.5+ cm from the side.



I then turned away the excess material, but left a small shoulder on the interior that will provide a seat for an insert. I want to add an insert for two reasons: 1) it will be a nice accent in the final piece, and 2) it will cover up the visible joint on the interior (plus, remember I left a small gap for glue to escape--gotta cover that up). Here is a shot of the hole with the visible shoulder:

 

[Darryl Fective]

OK, this is turning out to be very different than what I had pictured. When you mentioned the Ban Wa style teapot, I thought it would be a very wide base rounded teapot.

This is very interesting and it will be fun to follow your progress with it.

 

[Michael Anderson]

OK, this is turning out to be very different than what I had pictured. When you mentioned the Ban Wa style teapot, I thought it would be a very wide base rounded teapot.

This is very interesting and it will be fun to follow your progress with it.

Thanks Pete! Right, it’s kind of hard to tell from the chart what the shape will be. Here is a better view of the Ban Wa style:

 

[Michael Anderson]

Earlier this morning I went ahead and made the insert. I decided to use Sapele instead of something contrasting. I think it will work better with the overall look in the end (finger's crossed!). I first cut a piece from the piece from the same board, and turned it round. The board itself was about 2-1/8", and the lid opening where the collar sits is right at 2". Not a whole lot of room for error (but also kind of perfect). After turning it round, I made a tenon on one end and placed the blank in my chuck. I then parted away material with my skew so I had a section that fit through the smaller diameter hole in the teapot body (created by including a shoulder for the insert to sit on), and then also a larger section that fit the diameter of the lid opening itself.



Following this, I turned away an area behind (headstock side) of the top of the insert (though it would have been a bit smart to do this after hollowing the collar). Be sure to not turn away too much, as you'll be hollowing out your collar to fairly thin walls--if you turn away too much material behind the insert, you might risk setting it free unexpectedly. I then drilled a pilot hole and hollowed out the collar so the walls were around 3/32" thick (-ish--thin enough to still keep the entrance to the teapot fairly large.



This is also a good time to sand the interior of the insert if desired. I then parted away my insert, made a jam chuck (tenon) with part of the remaining blank, flipped around my insert and finished the top section (that will be visible). The following photo shows the jam chuck and the insert after finishing.



Here is a comparison shot of the teapot body without (top) and with (bottom) the insert. As you can see, adding a insert makes everything look much, much cleaner and more refined.



You can probably see above that my insert ended up being a hair too small, so the fit was a tiny bit sloppy. No worries though, I used some thick CA glue to fill the gap when centered--this won't really be visible in the end, so I didn't feel the need to make another one. Onward!

 

[Michael Anderson]

I managed to finish the lid yesterday, but not without a bit of drama! I'll get to that in a little bit. To make the lid, I used the blank that remained from making the insert. I first turned a section that would fit deep into the collar. This part I tapered very slightly so the fit would be very tight. Then I turned a larger section that fits in the lid opening above the collar. This was a little bit of a looser fit (though, in hindsight I should have turned this to be a bit more snug--we'll get to that).



After that, I parted off the lid above (toward the headstock) the larger section, and set aside for later. At this point, you don't need to worry about finishing the top of the lid, as that will be turned away. When I add a lid to a box (teapot in this case) that will have an embellished pattern, specifically positioned handle, or something similar, I like to add a registration pin. This ensures that the lid stays in alignment easily. For this teapot I wanted to add pin that was fairly inconspicuous, so I decided on a piece of copper wire. First, I chose a location for the pin and then I drilled a 1/16" hole.



Unfortunately, I got a bit heavy handed with my drill and drilled my hole too deep so that there was no bottom for the pin to sit on. This means that the copper wire, although snug and glued in place, can/will fall through eventually. To fix this, I turned a tiny 1/16" plug (very slightly tapered) from the nubbin that remained after parting off my lid. Delicate turning.



I then carefully parted off the plug with my skew, glued it in place in the hole. Problem solved! I then cut a piece of 14g copper wire to size and rounded and smoothed the end that would come into contact with the lid (this prevents the wood from marring the lid's surface, as well as makes it easier to "find" when putting on the lid). I also scratched and incised the end of the wire that went into the insert (this provides some tooth for the glue to adhere to--otherwise, the glue doesn't really stick well to the wire).

 

[Michael Anderson]

I used thick CA glue to glue the pin in place on the insert. To position the pin on the lid (rather, to position where to drill the hole) simply orient the grain as desired, and press the lid down in place. This will produce a dent in the precise spot on the lid (in the photo below you can see the dent in the top left). Alternatively, you can use some marker to produce a colored spot instead of a dent.



I then drilled a hole where the dent was--instead of 1/16", I drilled a very slightly larger 5/64" hole so the lid slips on easily but still tightly. Here you can see how I chose to align the grain, as well as the pin and complementary hole.



After finishing the pin, it was time to finish the lid. I want the contour of the lid to follow the teapot, so I placed the lid on the teapot body so I could turn away the top (this is why I wasn't concerned with finishing the top of the lid before). Prior to turning, I decided to carve away the edges a bit with my Dremel to lessen the impact while turning and decrease potential tearout. Burns/scratches don't matter when carving away the edges. However, you want to 1) be very careful to not mar the teapot's surface, and 2) be careful to not carve below the surface of the teapot body (everything should be flush). I typically add a couple pieces of tape outside the carving area to help prevent mishaps, but as you can see I got a bit careless and scratched the surface of the body. Oh well--this won't be visible in the end, but still...



Following this, I mounted the teapot back in the chuck as before, and carefully started turning away the surface of the lid. This is where things got a bit squirrely.

 

[Michael Anderson]

You know that feeling when you know what you're doing isn't the smartest thing? Well, that was me and this lid. I sized my lid fairly tight, and thought it would be snug enough to stay in place while turning. I was sort of correct, as it worked for a bit. However, eventually my little plugged lid came flying out due to it loosening ever so slightly and then hitting my tool (very sharp 3/8" bowl gouge). I was careful to take extremely light passes, but there was still just enough impact to not work. In fact, it came out once, and I decided that was because I was being too aggressive. I put it back, and after a few passes, it flew out again, but this time with a small chunk missing. Fortunately, the small chunk won't really matter in the end ( I haven't talked about my surface embellishment yet, so stay tuned). But, it was enough to make me rethink my process. I decided the best course of action was to add a couple of beads of hot glue to the interior of the collar (prior to adding the hot glue, I seal the wood's surface with some shellac to help with cleanup). This would prevent the lid from slipping out little by little, and as long as I was delicate with my cuts I wouldn't have a problem. I also thought it prudent to work on the lid one half at a time, and tape the other half in place with painter's tape. This worked out pretty well--the only problem was how to remove the plugged lid afterward.



After turning away the half of the lid you see in the previous photo, I moved the tape to the finished side, and turned away the other half. Following this, I took off the top and used my spindle roughing gouge to gingerly turn everything flush. I then sanded the surface to 320 (I didn't really focus on perfection, but rather making sure everything was perfectly flat). You can see in the photo below the chunk that got taken out before (lower right of lid). You can also see a little bit of tearout in the upper left of the lid--this is where I realized I should have focused on sizing the top of the lid a bit more snug, rather than the bottom section that fit into the insert. The fibers were support on the back side in this area, so they ripped away slightly. Not an issue though, as this shouldn't be visible in the end.



I like to think about better ways to do things, especially when going about something the first time. In hindsight, in addition to increasing the size of the top of the lid slightly, it might have been smarter to reinforce the fibers with some thin CA. I would also thing about changing the grain orientation a bit so that I was cutting side grain instead of endgrain (though, that depends on the design, and I think endgrain was still the best way to go here). I do think the hot glue was a good idea, but I think next time instead of turning away the bulk of the lid, I would probably use a router jig setup to remove the excess. This would be simple enough--set up the router bit nearly flush with the teapot surface, and then manually turn (with my hand) the teapot body section by section. I could also use a threaded setup so to keep the lid positioned. Next time! In any case, now that the lid was turned, I needed to remove it. Because the design of the teapot calls for a flat base, I had been planning to cut away the bottom anyway (but not yet). So, I drilled a small hole in the bottom of the teapot, and used my ramrod to push out the lid. I covered the end of the rod in tape so I wouldn't damage the bottom of the lid. The next couple of photos show the ramrod operation, as well as the two dabs of hot glue that kept the lid in place.




That's where we are as of this morning. The next step will be to cut away the bottom of the teapot (and then add a flat bottom), make a lid handle, body handle, and spot, and then proceed with the embellishments. Onward!

 

[Alan Weinberg]

my goodness, that’s a huge amount of work! Love how the wood halves are mirror images and match so well. Vicarious thrills.

 

[Michael Anderson]

my goodness, that’s a huge amount of work! Love how the wood halves are mirror images and match so well. Vicarious thrills.

For sure! But, most things probably seem more work when you write out steps individually. This just has a critical order of operations requirement. In the end it’s almost more work to constantly take photos and make these posts haha. 😃

 

[Michael Anderson]

Not a whole lot of free time today, but I did manage to squeeze in a little bit of teapot work while the kids were miraculously napping at the same time 😂. I decided to start making the spout. Although this is the first teapot I've made, it seems like the spout really defines the form. Much like the round bottom of a calabash bowl, if the spout doesn't look right, the whole form is ruined. So, I took some time to look at different variations of this style of teapot. Initially, I was planning on making a spout that had corners; however, I decided that it would be more fun to make a rounded spout that involved a bit of turning and carving. I drew several versions and sizes of spouts, and settled on this one:



I will likely move the spout down a bit in the final piece, but I'm pretty happy with the design. After I decided on this spout, I made another drawing of a spindle turning that encapsulated the spout. I want the spout to be functional (even though it will never be used functionally), so I had to make sure I could drill a hole while still being able to carve out the spout. Here is an image of the turned form with the spout drawn inside:



Pretty simple actually. The hole is 5/16" widens toward the bottom. I will also need to carve it a bit, as well as carve the exterior. Should be fun! The next step was to turn the form. Unfortunately, I did not have any Sapele quite this wide, so I decided to use a piece of Maple. The final piece will be (mostly) ebonized, so the color difference shouldn't matter. I used my drawing as a reference, and after rounding a blank of Maple, I made sizing cuts that denoted the top, middle (smallest diameter) and bottom of the spout:



I also drilled a hole all the way through the blank, and then turned the shape of the pre-spout.



The next step will be to turn this around and then.widen the bottom hole a bit. Onward!

 

[Gabriel Hoff]

Looking sweet Michael!! It is great to see the progress!

 

[Michael Anderson]

Made a bit of progress on the teapot spout this morning. I did end up turning the spout blank around and widening the bottom hole a bit, but in hindsight it's an unnecessary step. However, for the sake of talking about my setup for this: I placed a dowel in some pin jaws, and turned the dowel to size (with a slight taper) so that my pin jaws acted like a shoulder for the top of the spout blank to rest against. I then used tape to secure the blank in place and allow me to move the tailstock out of the way. This isn't the most stable setup, but it works in a pinch (e.g. there are better ways, but it doesn't really matter here). After finishing turning the blank, I started the carving process. I first determined the orientation of the blank--some of the Maple is a bit punky, so I oriented the blank so that I would be able to carve away the soft wood. I then marked some reference lines on the blank, and started carving away slowly. The key here is to take your time. Just like on the latge, you can take away wood, but can't put it back on.



Then it's just a matter of rinse and repeat. Carve to your lines, smooth the transitions, make more reference lines to denote another section, rinse and repeat. Of course, at this point I've been rough carving with a Kutzall fine flame burr (fine, but not really fine) so there are obvious scratches that will need to be removed later. But, this burr removes wood quickly, so get as close to the final shape as possible, but don't worry too much about refining the details until refinement shaping later. Here is a shot of the spout after roughing out the general shape.



Corners will be knocked off, transitions cleaned, etc... later, but it's a good start. You can see in the background of the image above, my drawing is always close by--this tells me where my reference lines need to be drawn, and gives me an actual drawing of the final shape (instead of winging it until something looks right. Following this photo, I carved a bit more, as well as widened the spout hole with the same carving bit. Carving progress shots are a bit boring, so I'll save you the "this looks pretty much the same as the previous shot" photo, haha. Following the above, I needed to start making the curve that joins the teapot body. I started by taking away some wood with an oscillating spindle sander and my widest drum:



Although the drum is fairly large for the tool (2" diameter) it's much too small for the actual teapot (a bit less than 7" diameter), so this was just for material removal. When using an oscillating sander, it's important to keep a good grip on the piece. This is in part because of safety (easy to get a catch and sand your skin), but also because the movement of the sanding drum can cause you to overcompensate grip unilaterally (resulting in taking off too much one one side (toward the top or bottom of the drum)). Also, whenever you're sanding end grain, just be sure to not press too hard (also think about support grain). Following the spindle sander, I used my power carver to rough away a bit more of the wood, and then placed a strip of sandpaper on my teapot body and used the teapot itself for final shaping. This gets you very close, and any remaining gaps will be taken care of later. Here is a progress shot:



A bit more sanding to do, and then I'll start refining the spout, do some final shaping, and then sand it (but not final sanding--that will come after it's attached. Onward!

 

[Michael Anderson]

I was able to work on the lid handle a bit today. The first step was to determine a size. I drew a few different diameter circles (2d cylinders), and then chose one and adjusted the width to what I thought looked best. Here is a photo of my paper reference teapot with the handle I settled on attached (keep in mind, minor adjustments may be made later):



I then took my lid handle template to the lathe, turned a piece of Sapele round, and using calipers laid out the handle blank. The handle is 1-7/8" diameter, with a thickness of 1/2". After sizing my blank, I marked halfway points on all flat surfaces (including the inner ring, though it's not shown in the following photo).



Essentially, this was just turning a mini torus shape. I've never turned a torus before, but it's basically a ring with circular cross-sections. Another way to think of it turning two spheres--one on the exterior of the ring, and another on the interior of the ring. I mean this in the sense that you only turn half of an object at any given point. In any case, work slowly, and connect each line with as perfect of a quarter-circle (sphere) as possible. Of course, you won't be able to complete the torus without turning around, so this will be your stopping point prior to parting:



I then parted this off, and made a small glue chuck with a tapered central cone. This allowed the in-progress handle to stay centered and sit snugly against the block. Here is a shot of the glue block's profile:

 

[Michael Anderson]

After I made the glue block, I attached the handle to the block via a few dabs of hot glue (coated the wood in shellac first). Then, I drew some more reference lines as before, and finished turning the torus. Note, if you're not comfortable doing this freehand, you can always print out a template to check your curve. Mine is probably not perfect, but it looks good enough.



After the torus was complete, I laid my template on top and marked where to cut the handle. Grain orientation is important here, so I oriented the handle such that grain is running up and down (relative to the teapot axis). This will ensure the handle won't snap when pulled upward.



I then cut my handle on the pencil lines with a fine-toothed saw, and took it to the spindle sander to rough the curve. Note, be better than I was and try not to mark your handle with the saw blade. Oof! It won't be visible in the end, but still...annoying.



Although the spindle sanding drum is not the correct size, this helps to ensure the same amount of material is taken off left/right (a the handle stands up). To refine the curve, I once again used my teapot body as a sanding block. Note: the teapot body was just a block--lathe stayed off the whole time. To keep my handle perfectly upright while sanding, I pressed it against a reference block with sides at right angles (at least the sides I was concerned with).



That's where I'm at as of writing this update. Tonight I hope to rough out the main teapot handle. If not tonight, I will tomorrow. Then its a matter of final shaping of the spout, cutting the teapot body to shape, attaching the bottom, etc... Though there is still a bit of work to do, I can start to see the light. Onward!

 

[Gabriel Hoff]

This is turning out to not be as hard as I thought! It is a lot of steps but not to many complicated steps.

 

[Michael Anderson]

This is turning out to not be as hard as I thought! It is a lot of steps but not to much complicated steps.

For sure! Of course, there's a lot of planning and precision work needed. That's why I took the time to create a paper template. I'm trying to stick to the traditional form as much as possible, so there's a fine line between looking right and looking "off". A bit less creative than an original design, but a bit more challenging as well. It's also very heavy on order of operations. There are a lot of different skills involved, but in the end, it's really just a BOX with some additional turned and carved elements.

 

[Vincent Vogel]

Looking good, this is interesting. I see you use CAD like I do. Full scale cardboard aided design. Just joking.

 

[Michael Anderson]

Looking good, this is interesting. I see you use CAD like I do. Full scale cardboard aided design. Just joking.

Thanks Vince! Thats funny. I don’t do this often, but when needed works great! Gives me the best chance of it not looking bad in the end haha.

 

[Kent Reisdorph]

I don't know how I missed this thread before now. I'm sort of glad I did, though, as I was able to read through several days of your work in one go. Very interesting. It gets the wheels turning.

 

[Michael Anderson]

I don't know how I missed this thread before now. I'm sort of glad I did, though, as I was able to read through several days of your work in one go. Very interesting. It gets the wheels turning.

It's better when you can skip the cliffhangers anyway

 

[Michael Anderson]

I've fallen a little bit under the weather, so I decided to go to bed early last night instead of working on the teapot. Probably a good decision. At the very least, it gave me some energy to work on the teapot body handle after I was finished with actual job work this morning (no rest for the weary, eh?). Anyway... Like you've seen previously, the first step was to lay out a design for the handle. I looked at a bunch of photos of Ban Wa teapots, and came up with a handle design, which I then sketch on some paper, using my paper teapot as a guide.



Though I think it looks okay on paper, once I cut it out and laid it next to the wooden teapot it looked a bit off. The size was a little bit too small--I could only fit two fingers in the handle, but ideally I would like to fit three. I redrew the handle a bit more elongated, and cut out a new version that I was pleased with. Here are the two paper handles next to one another (the larger one on the right is the winner).



The next step was to turn this into wood. Unlike the lid handle, which ended being a cut torus, this one could not really be made on the lathe. Fortunately, I have a scroll saw that can cut out small parts. I decided on a piece of Koa for the handle--I had a small board that was just the right thickness (1-1/8"). I could have use Sapele, but honestly I just didn't want to clean off my table saw the re-saw my board (unfortunately I do not have a bandsaw...real hole in my toolkit). Plus, Koa is a tad bit softer than Sapele, so it would be easier on my scroll saw and carving tools. (1-1/8" is very thick for a hard wood with a scroll saw). I cut my piece of Koa to size with a miter saw, and then taped my template to the wood via packing tape. I also taped the back side of the wood with packing tape. This helps to reduce tearout, helps the wood glide on the scroll saw table better, as well as sort of lubricates the blade. Cool, huh?



Like I said before, 1-1/8" Koa is heavy duty for a scroll saw, so I put on my most aggressive blade (11 teeth per inch), and worked slowly. Eventually, maybe 10 minutes or so later, I was able to relinquish my handle blank from my board.

 

[Michael Anderson]

With that done, it was time to start carving. The first step was to draw a line down the center of the handle. This gives me a reference for keeping things symmetrical. This will also later help align the handle when I attached it to the teapot. I also drew lines to indicate my wast--I sized these so that my handle would be about as wide as it was thick (aside from the connection points, which I will address later).



Once I carved away the waste lines so I had a roughly square cross-section, I then drew more center lines on the sides (forgot to snap a specific photo of that...oops!). Here is a photo after the waste was removed, but before I added the additional reference lines.



I then began rounding over the edges to form something close to a circular cross section along the length of most of the handle. It's a bit hard to see in the following photo, but most of the handle is pretty round.



The surface is still pretty rough, but that will be cleaned up later. Easy peasy. I wanted to show the carving bits I use most often to hog out material. These are all Kutzall burrs, and are the "Fine" courseness (There are also "coarse" and "very coarse" options). The top two are the most effective for roughing out (flame on the left, and sphere on the right), the bottom left dovetail burr is what I used to round my handle edges, and the bottom right taper burr is what I use for a bit finer roughing out.



Following these I use other types of bits to smooth the surface, and then rely pretty heavily on rifflers to get me to where I can sand (more on that later). That's where I'm at as of posting this message. Onward!

 

[Mark Fairchild]

Very interesting project Micheal, looking forward to seeing it through.

 

[Michael Anderson]

Very interesting project Micheal, looking forward to seeing it through.

Thanks Mark. It's a bit more slow-going than anticipated, but that's alright.

 

[Michael Anderson]

I managed to sneak in a bit of time after putting the kids to sleep to work on the handle some more. I started by scribing a circle on both sides of the bottom of the handle. I made sure to leave a mark in the middle so that I know where the center is later (this will help with attachment).



Following that, I carved away the excess so that the ends of the handle will slope toward the teapot body. I mainly used the sphere burr mentioned above, but the flame and dovetail burrs came in handy for refining the shape.



The surface is still very rough at this point, but no worries. The next step was to, once again, use my teapot body as a sanding block so that I could contour the ends of the handle. This went fairly quick, as I had previously sawed the general contour. Here is a shot showing the fit of the handle against the sandpaper.



Following this, I used some rifflers (small needle files) to refine the shape a bit, and also used some 180g sandpaper wrapped around a 1/2" dowel to smooth some bumps on the inner curve. I then lightly sanded the entire surface with 180g sandpaper--at this point the sanding is primarily to help identify areas that need to be worked a bit more.



The shape is starting to get close, but there's still quite a bit of refining left to get things perfect (you can see a couple of lumps in the photo above). I will continue to work on this some more tomorrow, as well as refine the spout, turn off the tenons and sand the teapot body. Then, I'll cut the body to shape, make the bottom, and attached the spout and two handles. A lot of stuff left, but having a good time!

 

[Gabriel Hoff]

How do you plan to attach the handle to the body?

 

[Michael Anderson]

How do you plan to attach the handle to the body?

I’m going to drill holes and use dowels to attach the handle. I will also use a glue/sawdust mixture to fill any gaps, as well as allow me to carve smooth transitions.

 

[Michael Anderson]

I made a decent amount of progress the last couple of days. Let's start with the teapot body. Because I didn't really need to use the body's shape a sanding block any more, I decided to turn off the tenons. The sides of the teapot need to be dead flat (or as close as possible), so as I turned I frequently checked the flatness with a straight edge. Once I was finished removing the first tenon, I attached a long sheet of 180g sandpaper to a flat board and lightly sanded with the grain (lathe off) until the surface was flat.



Following this, I lightly sanded the curved edge and made sure it was also flat. I want the surface of the teapot to be very smooth, so I decided to fill the grain. Ken Wraight, a top-notch Australian turner, recently summarized his finishing process on another forum--it sounded good to me, so I gave it a go. I lightly sanded both surfaces to 180, and left the sanding dust in place (as it is in all of the pores at this point). I then spread some thin CA glue over each surface with a paper towel. After the glue had set, I sanded the surface to 220, and once again left the dust in place, and then covered the surface again with thin CA. After the glue had set, I sanded again at 220, and that's it. I'm going to be modifying the surface, so I'm not too concerned about light 220 sanding scratches.



I then flipped the body around, and held it in place with a friction chuck (block of wood and drawer liner). I removed as much of the tenon as possible, at the same time frequently checking that the surface was flat. I also took the time to make sure that each half of the teapot was equally thick (I had to remove a little bit of material (maybe ~1/64").



I then removed the body from my chuck, covered the surface with painter's tape, and used a flush cut saw to remove the tenon nub.



Following this, I used the same sanding and CA glue protocol as before to finish this side of the teapot body.