Segmented Bowl

[Marmotjr]

Attempting to make a new type of  segmented bowl that I haven't tried before.  I've made a few of these before, but this time, I'm adding a 1/8" divider between each segment, to add to the brick and mortar look of the segments. 

Using a spreadsheet I designed myself, I planned out the bowl. (If anybody wants a copy, I can post it)

 

And the stock cut to length and veneers cut to thickness and length.  The walnut on the right is double thickness, laminated together. 

The top veneer is laminated to the stock before the segments are cut.  The bottom ring of pine will have veneer on both sides, the rest only one side.  Neither ring of walnut will get a top veneer, just sides.   In this pic, you're looking at the face that the saw will cut.

Base walnut ring cut into segments, and the veneer placed in between each segment, ready for glue up.   The narrow inside radius gave me some issues in the glue up, had to glue each piece of veneer to each segment, and then glue that up.  The glueing and sanding process for each segment changed the dimensions slightly, so I had a small gap, I'll have to use some filler when the bowl is glued up and roughed to shape.   Next time, I'll do the bases in halves and then sand and glue them up, less chance of gaps. 

I used a SegEasy mitre set block for the mitre fence, and a zero clearance waste fence to do the cuts. 

Base ring clamped to the glue block on the lathe.  When that's dry, I'll rough it true, and cut the mortise for the jaws.   Then it'll get removed from the glue block and flipped over, and trued up again.  The rest of the rings will get glued to the face currently facing the glue block (left).  The cone shaped thing on the right is just a piece of wood (coffee wood I think) that I turned into a cone and bored through the middle, turns out it's a great clamp piece, using the tail stock for pressure. 

And while that is drying, I'll cut the rest of the segments. 

 

The center of the base ring will get drilled out and a pine plug will be inserted, bringing all the veneers together visually. 

[Brendon_t]

Sounds cool. We don't get many turned journals.

[Marmotjr]

Well, this is going to be a journal of a nice bowl, or abject failure.  At this point, I'm giving it 50/50.  I have a couple issues I need to figure out that will make or break this one.

My biggest hurdle, and I want input from you guys, is sanding the veneered rings.  Usually when I glue up a ring,  the segments may shift a bit vertically, or get squeeze out on top and bottom.  It's not an issue, cause I throw it through the thickness drum sander I built, to smooth and level out both faces.  I don't care that much if the thickness sander reduces the overall thickness of the ring, or if one side gets really eaten up compared to the other, as long as the two faces come out parallel.  I really don't even care if those faces are square to the sides, as turning it will true the sides up. 

With these rings, one side will have the 1/8" veneerr on them. I can't lose much on that side.  And if I do lose thickness, it needs to be even all the way around.  So if the other face is not parallel to the veneered side when it is done sanding, one side of the veneer will be thinner than the other.  And I can't true up the veneered side on the lathe, as that too will eat up the veneer, and probably unevenly. 

So I'm open to suggestions on how to keep the two faces true.   I'll be extra vigilant on the glue phase, but I know some will shift. 

[Woodenskye]

I think the drum sander is still the best way to go.  

[..Kev]

Squeezing them in some sort of press and then applying your clamp may get you improved results. From there, the drum sander is the best bet.  I'd have to go look but, I think Frank Howarth did this a couple times so, might be a good resource to check out.

[Marmotjr]

Yeah, I think I've watched all of his videos.  I just wish I had a disc sander that big.  And I use the tail stock and that cone as my ring press.   I'll tap down the segments gently, and then  I think I'll use my stationary belt sander to flatten the one side, then drum sand the other. 

[Woodenskye]

Kyle Toth is another you could checkout.  What about mounting two circles on the lathe with sandpaper attached, sort of like a homemade disc sander?

[wdwerker]

Titebond II Extend will give you more open time to fiddle with getting the alignment just right. Over 10 minutes into a complex glue up I spotted an error. Unclamped and tapped it apart, re assembled and was so relived I caught the mistake.

[davewyo]

Can you shim and double stick tape the veneer side down and close to 100% level on a backer board? Send that through the DS to get the non-veneer side level. Then pop it off the backer and do a light pass on the veneer side to finish.

[Gixxerjoe04]

Not sure if I'm thinking exactly what you're talking about, but I would think gluing the thin segments together onto the ring it'll be glued to.  Would be some awkward clamping but I don't see gluing a 1/8" thick segmented ring working out very well.

[Marmotjr]

7 hours ago, davewyo said:

Can you shim and double stick tape the veneer side down and close to 100% level on a backer board? Send that through the DS to get the non-veneer side level. Then pop it off the backer and do a light pass on the veneer side to finish.

This may be the best bet yet.  I'll give this a try. 

Woke up with an idea though.   I sliced the veneer into 6"x24" sheets from the original stock of 12" wide boards.  Now while it would have been easiest to slice the veneer from the 12" boards, my bs doesn't have that capacity.  So I'm thinking next time I can just glue two 6"x10" sections in between each layer of rings, being careful to keep the joint tight.    But that will waste a lot of material, like 80-90% of it will be waste.   If the backer board doesn't work out, I'll have to give that a try. 

5 hours ago, Gixxerjoe04 said:

Not sure if I'm thinking exactly what you're talking about, but I would think gluing the thin segments together onto the ring it'll be glued to.  Would be some awkward clamping but I don't see gluing a 1/8" thick segmented ring working out very well.

Yeah, no, that would be nearly impossible. 

[Marmotjr]

Realized at work last night I can't cut the other rings till I true up the base ring and figure out what it's dimensions will actually be, then I can adjust the segment lengths for the remaining rings. 

Base ring trued up, faced, and ready to be drilled out for the plug and to cut the mortise.   This may be BORG walnut, but it's seems really nice to turn.  Of course, I don't have any other experience with walnut, so it may be total crap to turn. 

And the plug cut and glued into place.  

[Marmotjr]

Mortise Cut, bottom edges rounded, maker's mark scribed,  sanded to 400.  And it fit's my chuck!  I've made that blooper in the past.

 

Knocked off the glue block, mounted on the chuck.  Time to let this gooey mess (left over from inserting the plug) dry up before I true up this face. 

[Gixxerjoe04]

Could have glued up thicker pine rings, then used the bandsaw to cut off thin slices of veneer and finished them through the drum sander or glued on and trued up and got to right thickness?  Or glued the thick ring to the piece and parted off the excess.  Or am I just confused on where the veneer is going haha.

[Marmotjr]

No you got it, and I kinda like what you're thinking.  This is truly a work in progress, once I get the method down, I'll be able to do this a lot faster.   That may be the best way to do it (I think that's the third time I've said that, all good ideas guys!).   Lay on a thick veneer that I don't care if the sander eats away at, then turn it to thickness on the lathe.   That only takes a few moments to turn, especially since I have to wait for the previous ring to dry before adding another, or else they tend to dance around. 

[Brendon_t]

I've seen home made discs made from a few layers of MDF glued together somehow mounted to the lathe and adhesive backed paper used in a turning video. It seemed to work fine for the first side. It doesn't seem like it would take that long to make either.

[Gixxerjoe04]

I know some guys only let the glue dry 30 minutes to an hour before they turn a ring down.  My last/first big piece i glued up on the lathe, was afraid to try too soon so it took a few days to get it glued up and turned. 

[Marmotjr]

For normal rings without the seperating veneer, I usually wait around a half hour before gluing on the next ring.  I don't face each ring as the drum sander trued up all the faces for me.   I can do the whole bowl in a single day, then start turning it the next after the glue has completely solidified. 

@Brendon_t, you mean for the separating material?  I've looked at some of them, Kyle Toth uses some sort of fabric stuff.  Dunno what it is.   I'd like to try other materials, but this bowl is getting 1/8" wood.  :).     But the idea of cutting out MDF rings as the layer material is very very intriguing.  I think I'll try that next. 

That's one thing I love about wood turning.  As long as it doesn't explode in your face, there's not many ways you can do a turning "wrong", there's just better than others. 

 

Base Faced, diameter was a touch (1/8") smaller than I wanted, so I adjusted the spreadsheet to account for this.    Yup those are gaps in the seams.  Yup I'm going to have to use filler.  Let's hope it looks ok.  And yes, the plug is not centered correctly.  HIndsight 20/20 thing, I did a halfass job centering it on the glue block, normally not an issue, forgot about the plug.  It still wouldn't be perfectly centered, but it would be less obvious. 

 

THANK GOD FOR TEST PIECES!  I cut a couple test rings to make sure the math was right.  Each of them Were coming out WAY smaller than they were supposed to.   Turned out I was reading the thickness line on the spread sheet, not the length.   oops.   But dang, that MitreSet shows it's worth with these cuts!

 

First ring is glued up.  I'd love to show more of the process, but I had 24 joints to glue up, and I only have TBII, so not a lot of working time.  And I'm a messy gluer, and there's enough crap on the DSLR as it is.    In this pic, you can see how the veneers completely surround each segment.   Stack of rings like this, and it should look like brick and mortar.   Realized right before glue up that I had planned on sticking the veneer with the end grain out, and burying the side grain, which is dumb.  Had to cut new veneer pieces, as the ones I had prepped were cut the wrong direction.

 

 

I'm taking this slow.  I'd prefer to batch out all the rings at once, but since I'm still tryig to figure out how to do this, I'll take it as it goes. 

[Brendon_t]

No I was referring to when you said you wished you had a big disk sander like Frank howarth. The layered MDF is a way to essentially make a big disk that is mounted to the lathe and used as a disk sander.

[Marmotjr]

Ah, ok gotcha.  I was thinking much bigger than that, as my lathe is only a 10", but it would definitely be a start.  It would be pretty easy too, since I have the 1"-8 tpi tap for the drive shaft threads.   That is now on my to do list.  I also have a couple .75 hp motors laying around that may get brought into the mix too.  hhmmmm.....

So after seeing the first ring post glue up, I've come to the conclusion my approach is not going to work.   I cannot keep each segment level enough to keep the thickness of the veneer constant throughout each ring.  It won't look right when turned.  I beat each segment and veneer down  with a mallet, but I still have two segments that are offset just enough too much.   

What I may do with this ring though, is sand it down smooth, have my girlfriend burn Stargate (SG-1) symbols onto each segment, and then build a little base for it. 

So this is going from a simple journal of a build, to a how not to post. 

I'm going to resaw off some more veneer sheets, and glue them directly to the face of each ring, after it's been mounted on the bowl.   It'll waste a lot of veneer, but it's cheap material, I'm just using it for a visual separator.  it'll only show 1/8" of the grain anyways, so to use anything other than the cheapest wood possible would just be opulent, unless of course, I want the opulence of an exotic hidden veneer.   If I want a different color for the veneer, I'll just stain (dye) it. 

TBH, I had always feared cutting veneer.  I have a old smaller bandsaw (10").   But I recently picked up a 3/4" 4tpi Olsen blade, and built a fairly rugged fence for the saw.  Aside from the DC issue I'm still working out, It worked like a dream. 

As I said, this was a learning project, to figure out the best way to do this with wood as the "mortar".  Black construction paper mixed with Cherry and Paduak segments, done in an alternating, checkerboard pattern, might look amazing for my next bowl.  Though, since newspaper acts like a quick release for the glue, that might not hold together so well. 

Oh, and @phinds, you may appreciate I'm going to be calling the veneer material Larch if anybody asks. 

Ok, enough rambling, time to go cut the veneer.   I appreciate everybody's comments.  They were well received all around, and succeeded in having me look at this problem from different angles.  So thank you all!.  

[Marmotjr]

So... saving this (I hope) from turning this into a debacle, and back into a journal.  I took the step back and went back with the obvious (now) choice. 

Just gluing a sheet of veneer to the bowl between each ring.  It's actually two sheet, but the seam is taped together on the clamp side.  When it's glued up, the seam should be invisible.  Since these are planed down to 1/8", they should appear uniform all the way around.  (please ignore the huge gap in the ring.  I'm going to fill that before final sanding).

 

And the first two rings glued up.  My stop block must have shifted on me on my bandsaw sled (Yes, I have a bandsaw crosscut sled), the veneers were supposed to be only slightly proud of the segments.  I don't care if I lose a little thickness sanding these down flush, as I'll do all the rings at the same time.  And if anybody wants to try a segmented bowl, with or without veneers, I highly recommend the pipe clamps.  I used to use rubber bands, and they work, but you end up fidgeting a lot to get it lined up.  The clamps just, well, clamp it down.

 

For those who (aren't) wondering why I chose to laminate the segments first, and then cut them:  I wasn't confident on my ability to produce even thickness veneers on demand like this.  When I first thought up this plan, I didn't have a good resaw blade, a good bandsaw fence, nor a planer.   I had planned on doing the veneer strips on the tablesaw, so I was limited in width.  I didn't think I could make a piece big enough to cover the whole ring (I just thought of the blue tape idea the other night).  But with my current setup, I can just resaw the pieces to a fat 1/8", and then plane them smooth to the desired thickness.  The 735 handles the thin stuff like a champ. 

 

Thanks for reading guys!  I appreciate all the input.

 

[Marmotjr]

After a weekend of migraines and 7 year olds, back at it. 

Took the base to the bandsaw, as there was no way that huge square was going to rotate.  Trued it up, it's now ready for the next layer.

As for the next layer, got all the rings glued up.  Tomorrow will be drum sander day. 

I misread my spread sheet again, and cut one of the pine rings to the dimensions of the walnut ring.  So I ended up with an extra ring.   I think this may balance out the bowl artistically, as I am having doubts about it's final shape.    I'm okay with that, as this was a proof of concept type piece more than anything, but I hope this will help.

 

[Marmotjr]

Oh man, I love it when a project starts to fall into place, and you can see the results of your work starting to shine through. 

Setup the drum sander.  I haven't used this thing in a few months, and I kinda forgot how it went together, especially the DC bracket, I forgot I needed it.   Took it off, and then had to get it back on.   Unsanded rings in front.  I have to move this to the TS to use, as the bench I have the lathe on doesn't have enough clearance behind it to safely feed things through.  Adding the DC lost me some capacity, as I designed it before I realized it's nearly unusable without DC, so the feed table is now offset and inch or from the drum.  Still has 14" or so of capacity though. 

Rings after sanding:

I was expecting the slight possibility of maybe some tearout in the veneers, but there wasn't any.  These rings are starting to look good!  Of course, the cross hatched 60 grit scratches on walnut will make a few of you twitch a bit. 

I am VERY happy I ditched the idea of veneering the ring faces before sanding.  There is no way the veneer would have survived.  Each segment started out at .75", and after the glue up, the thickness of each ring was around .8" due to the uneveness of the segments.  After sanding, each ring is now about .60", so there's no way the .125" layer would have made it.  I would have had to sand it all off to look right and that would have pissed me off.  

Off to the glue up!

[Marmotjr]

Placed the camera tripod in a spot where I could still get to the bowl to do the glue up, but wouldn't bump the camera, so I could do a time lapse of the glue up.  It took two days (20-30 minutes in between each layer), cause I had to stop to sleep before work.  And when I took the lens cap off for day 2, I zoomed by accident and didn't notice.  Grrr.....  And it turns out there could have been a better angle. 

And yup, I was tired and not paying attention, and the next to last ring is out of alignment.  Not mission critical, but it will visually make it meh. 

[Marmotjr]

Roughing out has begun.  Hope the end grain of the veneer isn't to troublesome.

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