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The
Hex Plan for Polychromatic "Random" Wood Bowls
Also see Square Plan
This article was reprinted with the permission
of Max Krimmel. For more information about him and this technique
you can visit his website.
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This bowl was built up from a hexagonal plan (see diagram to left).
Sometimes people think I just glue up any old scraps I have handy
to make these pieces. Not so. I have in mind an overall effect from
the beginning. The early pieces (of which this is one) were made largely
of small scraps and as I ran out of small scraps I used larger and
larger pieces of wood to begin with. Toward the end of this series
I was using mostly new wood. Two or three large pieces would be glued
together with some veneer in the joints. Then I cut this block apart
(not on the joints) reoriented the pieces and re-glued them. This
process was repeated until I had the patterns I'm looking for. For
this piece I steered the glued up blocks toward the appropriate triangular
shapes.
It's a lot of trouble to make a block of wood such as the one this
platter is turned from. If you look closely you will see that some
of the joints in the piece are not accentuated with the dark veneer
(roll your mouse over the bowl image above). I wanted to hide these
joints, as they would then show the pattern in the diagram. I started
with just the small hexagon in the center (#1). This piece only
needed to be about 1/2" thick. Next I added the triangles (#2
- #7) to create a larger hexagon. These pieces needed to be thicker,
about 1". The next round of triangles (#8 - #13) thicker yet,
1 1/2" or so. I think there are five rounds all in all. Once
the initial block was assembled I brought the piece into round (outboard
on my old Craftsman lathe). Next I put the rim on, it's a band of
wood made of several layers, I used a band clamp and trued it up
after each layer. The rim locks everything together. I tried using
a router to power carve the piece (see the pictures below) but mostly
I just scraped it to shape, since I had not yet acquired any other
turning tools.
The name of this piece, Makowenaplege is "Maple" - "Koa"
- "Wenge", all chopped up and reassembled. This should
give you a clue as to why I now just number each piece.
The first picture shows the block from the back side, with a piece
for the base glued on and a faceplate screwed to it. In the middle
image the block has been turned round. In the third picture the
rim is being glued on with a band clamp.
I'm not sure why but even after I had trued up the piece it was
still quite out of balance, these wheel weights were glued on to
balance the piece. The next image shows the router mounted on a
stand, I would start the router, wiggle it into a position where
it would do some cutting, then rotate the lathe slowly by hand,
the system didn't work very well.
The first image shows the craftsman lathe I was working on at the
time. In order to turn outboard, I had rotated the headstock, reversed
the motor, and added an idler pulley to reduce the speed. The middle
image is another view of the router setup. The last image is the
outboard tool rest I made after I gave up on the router. Shortly
after this picture was taken I got a new lathe, a General 260.
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The finished piece, the perfect roundness and shape of the bowl
contrast with the random pattern of the glued up block. But
you and I know that the pattern was anything but random and
(if you have tried this process yourself) the shape is about
the only one available from the block. |
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