Woodturning... newbie here... will this plan work??

DeVore

So, I went to Electric Picnic this year and they had a crafts area and I met a very nice man who showed me how to make a very nice serving dish, which I did.

Drunk on the success, I promised I would try more and promptly never did anything else about it.

Now, I went and bought myself a brand new set of chisels and have sharpened them and have a plan to make my parents a mail holder. Seems like a simple enough project...

Its their 50th wedding anniversary so I thought a simple love-related theme might be nice to try.


Now, I have a half decently fitted out workshop with vice, bench, saws, drills and some very fine hand drills and bits and sanders so with the chisels I feel like I'm more or less tooled up. I'm not trying to build anything TOO crazy, I feel.

I've decided to go for a simple box shape, with leather "dividers" for the mail and with a carved design on the front. I've attached the design to this post.

I am making it out of white teal and I guess my questions are:

1. Is this realistic?

2. Is White teal ok for this work?

3. How should I approach this work?

In response to 3, my current thinking is to stencil the design onto the wood, drill a hole in the wood and use a saw or jigsaw to cut out the rough shape, then use the chisels to get it closer and finally the mini sander-drill to finish it off (or hand-sand it to finish).


Any advice for a n00b?

kadman

Sounds like a plan.

I,m assuming you mean white deal for the project. But it is soft and delicate enough, and awkward to get a nice clean crisp finish on it. Your chisels would need to be extremely sharp to avoid breaking off small corners ect of the white deal. Sharp as in razor sharp, not axe sharp:D

Red deal would be a better choice , or mahogany or sycamore ect. Slightly denser and better able to take the chisel knocks without disintegrating at the short grain join between the hearts. Pine mdf would also give a contrasting finish from the face of the board, to the cut sides, less likely to break to, at the delicate faces.

Your proposed method is good to go:) You could also router out the hearts with a proper template, if you had a router, or stick to the original plan. Dremel or similar to get into any tight spots for sanding.

Good luck:)

DeVore

Ok, so this has pretty much worked.... I jigsawed out the hearts roughly, then I usered a ROK drill with a mini drill attachment to "sculpt" out the rest and round off the edges and it looks pretty ok! I'm quite pleased with it and its given me some confidence to try some more wood turning.

I'll take some pics of it in a while and post them... its only the facade so now I need to work on the rest of the mail/letter holder part

I hope they like it

kadman

First of many projects methinks.:)