My Turn

Sean made this from an oak cutoff. The exterior was simply cut with a bandsaw; then Sean carved it. He hollowed the interior on the drill press, cutting hole after hole (I think he said sixteen or eighteen) with a Forstner bit. The interior burning is deliberate, done with a torch.

Sean has three more of these blocks to play with. He elected to hollow a second on the lathe, as shown below. He says Jean-François also wants to make a bowl like this.

I wonder what Sean is working on here.

I love that Sean makes use of scrap wood. I also like to use wood that most other turners wouldn’t look at twice. Nice scrap he’s got here, eh?

Jean-François decided to replace the broken ailanthus bowl, so he has turned another for his trio. Here, he has finished the exterior and is just turning the interior to the final wall thickness.

He still cannot leave the ailanthus, though. He turned another bowl, this one face grain in orientation. He tried texturing the exterior with a wire brush again, but he didn’t like how it looks with the grain running sideways, so he used the Arbortech over the brushing.

This left a thicket of fibers, so he used a torch to remove them. He then rubbed water all over the bowl to prevent cracking from the heat. He used water that was white with acrylic paint from finishing the exterior of the trio of bowls, so the rubbing left the exterior various shades of gray.

Siegfried’s day wasn’t a great one for photographs. He spent all day on sanding the interior of his box elder vessel. A lot of time went into constructing and refining what he calls a “linette” (I made the spelling up), an apparatus for supporting the drill while he sands the inside bottom of a deep vessel. It allows him to swing the drill back and forth while preventing it from walking. Once he got the linette made to his satisfaction, it was a matter of very patiently sanding and sanding and sanding again to get the bottom as smooth as a baby’s bottom—his standard for finish sanding. He did finally achieve it; just touch the inside, and you’ll see. Or take my word for it.

I began my turning day by hollowing the sugi (Cryptomeria) bowl. I was quickly presented with a design opportunity. (For those not in the know, this is what woodturners say when things don’t go as planned—i.e., when things break. Perhaps other professions use the same term . . . ?) Yes, I got a catch that pulled the bowl from the chuck, and when it hit the wall, the natural edge became a little less natural. (Or maybe differently natural.) I finished the bowl and went with the flow and similarly enhanced the rest of the edge. It’s pictured below. Can you tell which is the original break?

Jean-François thought there should be a document of me actually working, so he took these photos. Now that my turning is documented, he says I don’t have to turn anymore. He is always looking out for me.

I brought the sugi bowls back to my room with me last night. The smell of Japan was with me all night.

Today, Siegfried began a larger vessel of the same shape as the silver maple vessel, this one of box elder. He was shooting ribbons to the ceiling turning the very wet wood.

When he began deep hollowing of the vessel, he tried out the hollowing tool with the Stewart armbrace and Jean-François’s attachment. He says he enjoyed the experience, though he found himself switching back and forth between the tool and a heavy gouge. Yesterday, he tried out my Exocet tool. He regards trying new tools as one more of the opportunities afforded us by the ITE. So do I.

Sean gets tired of working on long, complicated projects, so today he decided to make a “fast” bowl from a cutoff. Here, he is already carving the foot. The photos below show the finished piece. Yes, the color is artificial.

I have begun thinking of Sean’s sculpture as our mascot. Here it is in its latest form.

Jean-François has finished his three ailanthus bowls. Here they are. He cannot quite hide the break in the first bowl, so he doesn’t yet know what to do with it.

Jean-François and Sean are collaborating on the oak sculpture for which Sean turned the pieces. Both are carving and texturing the pieces that will be joined for the final work. Here, Jean-François is using a Foredom to work (or not) on the disc that will be the base of the sculpture.

My large mulberry bowl exploded today. I had just turned up the speed, looked at the dial and thought, “That’s probably too fast,” and it blew up on me. The glue joint at the waste block gave way. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Sean took the largest pieces to use in one of his freeform sculptures. No, no photos of the explosion or its aftermath.

After picking up the pieces, I picked up a log of Cryptomeria japonica instead. Now, as it happens (thanks to Gus and the cosmos), I’ve gotten wood from three important species of Japanese trees here: this one, paulownia (kiri), and Japanese cypress (hinoki). This is also known as Japanese cedar, sugi in Japanese, and it is the national tree of Japan. Its earlywood and latewood differ greatly in density, so it is a perfect wood on which to use Jean-François’s texturing technique. Look at the texture I achieved using a wire brush in a drill. I applied the brush both with the piece turning and turning it manually. Jean-François showed me the trick of reversing the drill as needed to brush with the grain; for all you novices to this technique like me, this greatly reduces the fuzz inevitably raised by brushing.

Jean-François was hard at work most of the day on his first ailanthus vessel (he plans three). He tried different wire brushes for texture and ended up using a very aggressive brush he brought with him from France. He used an Arbortech blade to make the rim irregular, then proceeded to work on thinning the wall.

“Ooops” is apparently an international word. But no worries. After repairing the break with help from Sean, Jean-François pressed on with bowl number two.

Sean likes to have several projects going at once. He set aside the burl vessel to start a piece of burr oak. From the chunk of wood you see on the lathe, he turned a ring and a disc. He later cut the ring apart. He’ll carve the pieces and later put the pieces together in a sculpture.

Siegfried expanded his horizons by beginning to carve a bowl he turned from a piece of dry horse chestnut that he brought with him from Germany. He also continued work on the silver maple vessel. He has the exterior established and is working now on hollowing it—before it gets too out of round from drying, he hopes.

I hadn’t intended to turn today, but when I went to the shop I got pulled in. I started a second mulberry vessel from a large, checked quarter of a trunk. I love working the wood. It’s very yellow now, but the color will deepen to a dark russet. I know exactly what I want to do with the cracks in this piece. Once I established the basic outer shape, I glued it to a waste block mounted on a faceplate. Then I had to leave, because I had to let the glue dry.

These are some of the pieces I’ve started since arriving. The dark bowl is walnut, my Siegfried bowl. The second, lighter one is a round-bottom bowl of wet pear. I wirebrushed the exterior, but the texture is subtle. I plan to do some carving with the Foredom to add more texture. You can see the movement of the wood as it has dried. And the last, still mounted on the lathe is the second mulberry bowl.

I slept in a little for a change, and when I got to the shop at around 10, the first collaboration was finished, a vessel made by Sean and textured by Sean and Jean-François, of Tennessee aromatic cedar, a thank-you gift for Gus. 

Soon after I arrived, though, everyone else headed out. Sean and Jean-François went off with Gus again, because they didn’t get enough wood yesterday (!), and Siegfried had business in town. So I, the ostensible photojournalist, got to spend most of the day happily turning by myself. After Sean and Jean-François came back and unloaded, they went off again. All remained quiet then until about 4, when everyone came back and got to work.

Jean-François turned an egg cup from some scrap wood. So far pretty much everything he’s made has been about food. It is important, though, that he not burn his fingers when he is eating his eggs.

Sean started a vessel from a large maple burl.

Siegfried worked on a yew bowl that he started yesterday, I think. Turning green wood is a different experience for him.

I finished the interior of the walnut bowl I started Tuesday. It’s a Siegfried bowl, applying some of his concepts. Turning it was quite erotic. I turned the interior until the curve and depth felt right to my fingers, closing my eyes again and again to check the curve, using my eyes only to get a clean finish. I will finish the round bottom another time. Then I turned a round-bottom bowl of pear. I left the interior unsanded, with tool marks, and textured the unsanded exterior with a wire brush. I’ll try for a photo tomorrow. I’m interested to see how the wet wood dries.

“ConneXtions: A Collaboration of Glass and Wood” is an exhibition jointly sponsored by the American Association of Woodturners (AAW) and the International Society of Glass Beadmakers (ISGB). More than 100 woodturners and glass beadmakers are collaborating on pieces, and their creations will be exhibited June 26–December 15 at the AAW Gallery in St. Paul, MN.  

Last fall, I met a glass beadmaker, Terry Bendt, a fellow Japanese-American, at the Tucson Museum of Art show. We liked each other’s work and liked each other, and when I next saw her, she told me about ConneXtions. Terry and I started brainstorming and decided to do two pieces inspired by the American internment of Japanese immigrants and Japanese-American citizens in camps in the United States during World War II. One piece is focused on the so-called relocation center at Manzanar, California; the other, on the Gila River camp in Arizona.

It’s been an exciting process—for both of us, if I may speak a little for Terry. We have both challenged ourselves technically to do work beyond what either of us has done in the past. Collaboration is new to me, and I’m loving the energy and the exchange. But the best part for me has been getting to know Terry and feeling like a midwife to Terry’s process. You see, Terry’s family was in Manzanar, the best known of the camps. And it’s not a part of her family history that she knew very much about. In making these pieces she has been learning about her own heritage. And it has been my privilege to be a witness and a facilitator to that process.

I’m also delighted with how our pieces are coming out. The heart of the Manzanar piece is a turned hollow vessel of applewood (“Manzanar” is Spanish for “apple grove,” and the site of the camp was an abandoned orchard-farming town). Only the inside of the vessel is turned; the outside remains the raw, chainsawn block I began with. The block is wider than it is thick, so when I hollowed the inside, the turning pierced the front and back walls, leaving “windows” into the vessel. I offset the center slightly so that the front window is slightly larger than the back; thus, when you look through the front window, you see the frame of the rear.

After the closure of the camps, landowners near the site of the cemetery at the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming uncovered a 55-gallon drum full of small stones painted with kanji characters. We’ve borrowed from that fact for both our pieces. Terry has made beads that look like stones, and I have painted some of them with characters such as those for “perseverance” and “family” and “dream.” Both the painted beads and plain faux stone beads will lie inside the bottom of the vessel with some scattered cherry blossom murrini beads. More cherry blossom beads and glass shard beads with family photos will adorn five strands of barbed wire that will wrap the outside of the vessel.

The Gila River piece will consist of a black serving tray partially covered with dirt from the Gila River camp site. Fallen over on the tray will be a teacup, a broken and mended rice bowl, and a pair of chopsticks, all turned from mesquite, a wood native to the Gila River area. Stone beads, both plain and painted, will spill from the cup and bowl. A strand of barbed wire will lie in the dirt, punctuated with handful of cherry blossom beads.

My grandmother once showed me a treasured tea bowl that had broken and had been professionally mended. No attempt had been made to conceal the brokenness; rather, the breaks were emphasized by conspicuous seams of adhesive that had been mixed with gold. Instead of diminishing the object’s value, the repair thus underscored it. This is the idea behind the broken, mended rice bowl.

In my original conception of the piece, barbed wire was to encircled the tray, attached to posts at the corners. One fact kept coming back to me, however: At the understaffed Gila River Relocation Center, the single watch tower was torn down soon after the camp was in operation, and the barbed-wire perimeter fence was taken down after six months. What model prisoners must the camp have held.