I had to go to the UK for my paying job for the past 5 days. I planned ahead and brought a couple of my of my Blues Bowls with me.  I had a friend I had met almost two years ago that lived in the area and he said he’d come up and meet me for supper one night and he was interested in one of the instruments.  Well, here we are after a long visit where we solved most of the world’s problems and definitely improved American / United Kingdom relations.  Mike Laverick’s a great guy and I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation.  He took both of these Blues Bowls home with him.  I hope he gets as much fun out of playing them as I did making them.

A friend came over to the shop about a week ago. I understand that I’m being blamed by his wife for ruining their budget because now he needs some new tools. It’s funny how it works like that.

The cool thing is he works for Black & Decker who owns Delta, Dewalt and Porter Cable among other tool subsidiaries so he gets a discount. Time for a shopping trip!

I’ll be demonstrating turning one of my Blues Bowls for the Charlotte Woodturners club monthly meeting on the 18th.

Everyone is welcome and it doesn’t cost anything to see the demo and come out to talk shop with a bunch of woodturners. My plan is to go out to the shop at Jackson Park Ministries earlythat morning so if you …have some time that day and want to come out and talk woodturning let me know.

I’m hoping to be there by 9:00 AM and the demonstration starts at 6:30 PM. My schedule is to work out some kinks in our audio/video system early in the morning and then “play” with the lathe until the demo starts. If an impromptu class/turning session starts up in the process, so be it.

I thought I had my tool lust taken care of for a little while but I saw something demonstrated last night and I’ve got to figure out either how to make one or beg, borrow and steal the money to buy one. A fellow woodturner, Roland Hege, demonstrated a threading attachment at the Charlotte Woodturners meeting. It’s a very slick tool and allows you to make threads in wood for threaded boxes, wooden bolts and nut or whatever else you could think of.

Roland makes a lot of really cool tooling and is part of the brains behind the Rambling Rose Engine that I’ve talked about before.  Great job Roland!

I’m going to take a little road trip down to Columbia, SC on February 6th to Mann Tool & Supply for a demonstration with the Palmetto Woodturners Club.  I’ll be demonstrating turning a teapot and looking forward to meeting some new turners.

See ya’ll there at 9:00 AM ready to go.

Only three more days before Christmas and I still have two projects to finish. We’ve done a lot of interesting Christmas shopping this year and tried to stay on the hand made art and craft side as much as possible. It’s really a lot easier with the number of people I’ve met and it’s amazing the work that is produced just among our group of friends. We’ve had to go outside of that a little to places like Etsy and people we’ve picked up through Twitter but it’s been a lot of fun.

Here’s to everyone having a Merry Christmas!

I was actually productive this past weekend and finished a couple of pieces. I hope to get a lot more done over the next couple of weeks.

I’m scheduled to do a demonstration for The Mint Museum of Craft & Design tomorrow (September 18th) from 11:30 to 1:00 on Hearst Plaza. If you’re downtown in the Queen city tomorrow bring your lunch and stop by to see me.

I’ve put together a couple of Diddley bowls over the past few weeks. They’re one string instruments that anyone can play in a matter of minutes. They’re a lot of fun.

Check out a video of me playing it.

Find more videos like this on Cigar Box Nation

Sometimes I feel obsessed with getting a project completed.  Last night was one of those nights and I eneded up staying up well past my bedtime.  It would seem that it paid off however and I got quite a bit done on a new project.  I’m calling this new Blues Bowl “My Demons” due to the really interesting pattern in the spalt on the top.

I started the design with the top in mind.  It’s book matched spalted sycamore that I glued up and ran through my planer.  I then cut a circle from the glue up on my bandsaw and used a friction mount between the top of the bowl and the tailstock to turn the piece round and mark where the rabbet would be in the top of my bowl.  The technique worked well and the piece fit perfectly.

The bowl is a piece of walnut and turned out nicely I think.  It’s a little heavy but I think it will be fine.  It has good balance in the grain patterns on the bottom of the bowl.

I made the neck by turning two face jointed pieces of cherry between centers.  I put a piece of brown paper between the two pieces of wood to make it easier to get them apart once I finished turning them.  The neck is approximately 1 1/4″ across.  I ran the face across my planer to clean up the glue joint and then faired the edges to make it comfortable.

To finish it up, I need to make make the plug for the bridge, wire it up with the pickup, place the nut, and possibly put some sound holes in it.  I’ll do some final sanding and then finish it with lacquer.  Still a ways to go. I’ll post the finished project soon.