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Fixing Mistakes - When To Call It Designer Firewood

Tom De Winter

Tom De Winter

Joined
Apr 30, 2020
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Location
Quad Cities, IL
This post is prompted by comments made in this thread https://www.aawforum.org/community/...r-healing-cracks-sometimes.18722/#post-189097

A week ago I started a combo salt shaker/pepper-mill as a Christmas gift for a grandson. I started with a chunk of hackberry that looked interesting. As I finished boring the 1-1/16" hole through the center I noticed that the forstner bit and extension was wobbling. I didn't realize that the stage was set for failure.

I continued with the piece deciding on and turning the outside. I was pleased with the flow of the curves and wanted to preserve them and the grain continuity. I carefully parted the piece into a top and bottom. I didn't want a feature at the joint and was confident that I didn't need one to mask any problems.

Fast forward to assembly of the mechanism. That's when I discovered how off badly the hole was messed up. Not only did the top move out of alignment by at least 1/16" as it was rotated it also wobbled as the hole was off-axis to the turning. It should have went into the firewood box at that time. But with the deadline and liking everything else about it I decided to fix it.

That process involved my metal lathe and mill to rebore the center hole and bearing surface hole true to the turning. Of course the bearing surface was now oversize so I used a piece of PVC pipe to make a collar to glue on to the mechanism and fit it to the new oversized hole.

Anyway the hole process (spelling and pun intended) took a couple days to complete. The top now rotates with less than 0.010" runout. I was happy with the result. My grandson was thrilled with it. Was it worth it? I'm still undecided. It was definitely a learning process.
 

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^^^^^ I can relate to the "never give up" thinking.....been there, and done that so many times before, myself! :rolleyes:

Good example, @Tom De Winter ....

In Tom's case, there never was a moment when it looked like the mistake couldn't be fixed, and nobody would be the wiser. I've done that, too.....but, when there is no way the bowl would ever not look like a repaired mistake, or unacceptable flaw.....THAT's the time to call it quits, and move on.

There have been an untold number of times, I kept thinking "maybe I can fix this".....and finished a bowl.....but, ended up thinking I could never give this as a gift, let alone try to sell it. Those that couldn't pass that muster, but didn't look too bad, I gave to the ladies of my church. There must be a couple hundred of them that were given to the church ladies over the years......and, it's always great to hear that they can't see why I rejected the bowl, in the first place! (It's usually something like poor sanding, a small crack, a little flaw in the profile......something like that.)

Those that couldn't even pass that muster....went right in the garbage.....I don't want to see them, or think about them anymore....it's over! ;)

-----odie-----
 
Nice work and recovery Tom. Yep, sometimes the "recovery from near failure" is very rewarding both in outcome and in accomplishment. When I have one of those flaws that I know I'm the only one that knows it's there (a CA line in the finish that isn't really a grain pattern, a small scratch that will be blended in with 100 others after the first time they put pine cones or something else in it, a swirl mark in the middle of the foot that once on a shelf will likely never see the light of day again, etc) I have to set it aside and let it settle in for a few days and let my wife look at it. Like Odie I usually have to get them out of sight and in the burn pile or I'm tempted to keep picking them up and debating what to do. I do have a reject shelf that I sometimes put stuff on to maybe ponder a few more times but again, after a few times it's over.
 
Tom De Winter said:
Anyway the hole process (spelling and pun intended) took a couple days to complete. The top now rotates with less than 0.010" runout. I was happy with the result. My grandson was thrilled with it. Was it worth it? I'm still undecided.
Click to expand...
Good decision this time!

When to fix or pitch has no easy answer.

As we get more proficient and more discerning many of us tend to pitch more than fix
We work faster, have access to more wood than we can turn,
We also hopefully have far fewer things that need fixing

When it takes took us 2 hours to rough a bowl we didn’t mind spending 45 minuets to fix one.
When we progressed to needing 20 minutes to rough a bowl. Why spend 45 minutes fixing it when you could rough 2 more?

If the wood has some intrinsic value it usually means fixing.
 
I experience two (at least) kinds of fixing.

Sometimes, I get a bowl off the lathe and get ready to apply finish (or get one coat on) and notice something - like the bottom isn't good or there's something I missed sanding, etc. Those I usually take back to the lathe or the sanding and get them fixed. Often that's not so much about "fixing" as reminding myself to be more careful next time. An investment in getting it right next time.

Other fixes arise from the wood - like cracks or voids or worm holes, etc. These I basically take on a case-by-case basis. If I can incorporate the "flaw" as a "feature" and it makes the piece better, then I do what I can to work with the flaw. Sometimes it's not worth it. The other day I was digging worm dirt out of the tracks in a smallish ash bowl and realized that there were way more tracks than I originally saw, and I was going to spend way more time digging out the worm poop than the bowl could ever be worth. So I stopped and moved on to something else.
 
Maybe there is some vanity in my approach towards final results, or maybe a strict German upbringing (as my Father would say, "I don't want to see something done half-assed"). But either or both ways, I strive for the best I can possibly do. I expect my work to last long past me, and I surely don't want my family or a customer to judge my work as just okay.
 
How much time and money is invested in the piece? You rough turn a hundred bowls and will usually lose a few during the turning & drying process.
Is it a $1.00 or $100.00 piece of wood? If you have plenty of wood to work with don't waste your time on fixing a bad piece when you can turn another one in very little time. learn your lesson and avoid the same mistake on the new piece.
 
Mike Johnson said:
How much time and money is invested in the piece? You rough turn a hundred bowls and will usually lose a few during the turning & drying process.
Is it a $1.00 or $100.00 piece of wood? If you have plenty of wood to work with don't waste your time on fixing a bad piece when you can turn another one in very little time. learn your lesson and avoid the same mistake on the new piece.
Click to expand...
sometimes, it is not about dollars or minutes... Sometimes it is about just wanting to see if one can maybe DO something different or unusual, or just plain experiment with some new idea. Except for the ones that are hopelessly blown to smithereens, damaged tenons or tenons gone, I save all my failures.. so far I have come back to three of them and turned them into something else that was not even what had been intended in the first place.... for one example, two unrelated pieces turned at different times I noticed were almost a match in pattern and color after they'd fully dried in the scrap pile, so I turned them down way smaller and made a lovely looking box - sold for enough money to pay for a whole dump truck load of freshly cut black walnut (the guy only kept the trunk for slabbing on his mill and offered me the rest of it for the hauling fee)
 
Thanks for all the different perspectives. I figured that more of you would have said it was a bad decision to continue - a rookie mistake :). I've been turning about 18 months or so. Sometimes I feel like that's one month experience repeated 18 times. I will never turn with the intent of selling. I've ruined several good hobbies by turning them into a business and won't make that mistake again. I suppose there will be a point when family, friends and my wife say "no more". But I have a very large family and am not there yet. So I'll cross that bridge when needed.

I wish I knew why the forstner bit drifted so badly and what I could have done to minimize it. I thought I had a good balance of RPM and feed rate.
 
#1 thing, at least for me, causing forstner bit drift is a dull bit. You can add to high rpm as well. If the tailstock and jacob's chuck don't like up perfectly, that is another cause. They will never stay on center past a depth of about 1 inch, and the deeper you go, the farther off center it gets, kind of a bunch of little things adding up. I have tried to hollow out a hole to start the bit in to see if that helps. It seems to help for the first 1 inch, and then back to normal drift.

robo hippy
 
Tom, your comment "ruined by turning it into a business" and "never turn with the intent of selling" caught my attention. I agree with both and it's how I approach the work but I've also sold lots of bowls and hollow forms over the past few years. My two cents on how I approach the tension - make what you want to make. Keeps it fun, interesting and challenging. Give away what you want to family, friends, gifts, etc. If someone I know sees something in my cabinet they like, I most often hand it to them and say please take it. Find a way to sell some at a local craft market, consignment shop, neighbors that want more than the few you've given them already, etc. Having someone buy one of your pieces is a real confidence builder. I sell a lot of items but I don't consider it or run it like a true "business". That would ruin it for me. I make things that please me AND someone might like as a gift AND someone might want to buy if I put it out on a table at a craft show but, the starting point for all is I made it because it's something I wanted to make.
 
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