Turned Up: Woodturning Grant Class

Me at work at the lathe, making a ring holder for my jewelry

Last year, I received a generous grant from the Friends of the Florida School of Woodwork to take a woodturning class. Why would I want to do that? To make some one-of-a-kind jewelry displays, of course!

My goal was to gain skills to make these designs on my own, and maybe even come out with a few pieces that I could use right away. Not only can I use them for my jewelry photo shoots, but I plan on attending a few art fairs in starting up in the next few years and could use some classic displays for my works.

A view from my sketchbook of some potential plans I had for ring and pendant displays

The week-long course was the second week of Nov. of last year, and happened to be when I was 8 months pregnant with my son (which is why I’m only getting around to posting now, whoops!) and was taught by the wonderful Peggy Schmid and her lovely assistant Cindy Boehrns.

A peek inside the Florida School of Woodwork, where we were encouraged by the adorable shop dogs

In the laid-back class, we learned basic techniques on the wood lathe, like creating finial designs in a long piece of wood as a practice run.

This practice made an easy transition over to making small ring holders for my designs. (I think the course was supposed to have us make Christmas tree ornaments, so I made one of those and an abstract acorn too!)

An array of the things I made in the first few days of the workshop

Here’s what they look like on the lathe before removing them

I brought my ring sizer with me to test fit as I cut

After playing around with solid forms for a few days, we started to get into hollow forms with plates and bowls. They were little more tricky since you have to cut the outside shape of the bowl before removing the piece from the lathe, flipping it around, then cutting the inner side of the form all while making sure the walls have a nice, even thickness (and no gouge marks left!).

Me at work on a shallow bowl/necklace display

First deciding what the outer shape of the bowl should be

Then, you switch tool rests to cut the inside of the bowl/plate form

While these could fully well serve as a bowl or plate, I intend these to be nice pendant displays for my inlay works!

Test idea for a woodturner pendant display

Needless to say, I got really into the whole bowl-making thing :)

The week really flew by, and I got more wood shavings down my shirt than I ever would like to have (I’d actually wager that wood chips are more painful than rock chips!), but it was a lot of fun and I hope to get a chance to get back on a lathe soon!

In the meantime, I’ll have my hands full (not just with my newborn) polishing and finishing these pieces before I can start using them in photoshoots, so be on the lookout for them when I post new pieces!