Green Aromatic Red Cedar Turning Project
justlee
| Posted in Turning and Carving on
I have a juniper about five inches in diameter which was just cut down, so I have several logs of it. Can I use this wood for turning? What would be a good project for it? I have a new mini lathe and have never turned anything before.
Replies
If you live near a Woodcraft store, they have seminars on turning quite frequently.
I am not familiar with Juniper, but choosing green wood is probably not the best choice for a turner just starting out. I recommend a seasoned hardwood like Bubinga. It has a straight grain structure and is easy to learn on and is relatively inexpensive.
Start with spindle turning because you are not faced with end grain issues like you will be if you begin with bowls. I started my children out on pens. They are easy to learn. You finish them the same day you begin them - at the beginning in about 2 hours. Satisfaction and relatively instant gratification make these a great learning project. And when you do mess it up, it hasn't cost you much.
BTW: Their are a few good DVD's on pen turning in case you can't get to a class.
GREG
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Edited 6/6/2007 6:12 am by Cincinnati
justlee, for a beginning turner, the green juniper is a good practice wood. It will be easier to turn than dry hardwoods and you can practice tool control.
One of the turners here made a barley twist candle stick out of juniper that was great. It is not my favorite wood to turn I but have made mallets and rolling pins out of it. They are not useful items but the experience taught me a lot about turning.
Keep the items that you turn so that you can gauge progress as your skills develop.
Also, you should consider joining one of the AAW chapters.
http://www.woodturner.org/community/chapters/
Steve
Aromatic red cedar is one of my favorite woods, so I hope that I get good enough to make something I want to display before using it all up. It is downed limb season, so more green wood may be obtainable, but I don't usually see downed juniper. This tree was right against the foundation of our house and had to go. Thank you for the suggestion of joining a AWW, I will look into it.
Pippins,I'm very new to turning and your advice is green wood is good practice wood as opposed to seasoned hardwood as suggested by Cincinnati. Now I'm confused.It would make sense to me that green wood would be easier as it would most likely be softer but being new to turning I don't know. I just started and am taking lessons and so far (6 hours of learning) we have only used green wood so I guess my mentor is in your camp on this.I'm sure there are merits to both but I would like to better understand the philosophies of both. Could either/both of you gentlemen clarify a little more for us?Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Bob, when I started turning, I turned everything that I could get my hands on. This includes dry Mesquite and petrfied OsageOrange. This was a big mistake. With hindsight, I could have saved some frustration by sticking with materials easier to work.
The soft woods were much more forgiving of my rookie mistakes. I recommended the green juniper as a practice wood for several reasons:
1) It is a soft wood and easy to turn. 2) Being green, it will be easier yet. 3) It was readily available to justlee as he had some on hand (here in North Texas it is considered a trash tree) 4) It was inexpensive. 5) It requires less shartpening skills to turn. 6) etc.
The seasoned hardwoords are much more difficult to turn and require improved skills. I went though a lot of sandpaper in attempts to shape bowls correctly because I could not wield tools with enough finesse to achieve the desired shapes. Also, I through away a lot of good quality hardwood while learning.
Of course you will move on to the hardwoods as your skills develop. I recommend that you do. But for a raw beginner, I would stick with something easy.
Steve
Thanks Steve,I've just started and have a mentor who is teaching me as well as giving me "homework" to do for the next class. It's getting to be a lot of fun and I just started. So far have been working with just roughing gouges with an occasional try with the spindle gouge.We have access to volumes of practice pieces living in the country as it is. The progression is to go up (meaning harder) from softwoods to eventually seasoned hardwoods.The other day my teacher had me try a square block of seasoned cherry, just to get the feel. After a nasty catch I got the feel real quick! Wrists can take a hell of a beating! I GOT THE FEEL!I must say that turning to the cutting edge sure is a lot easier on soft green wood when starting out.Yes, I am having fun!Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Bob,
When I started turning 22 years ago, someone started me with pine spindles for practice. I remember gouging out chunks of wood during the practice. The first project I attempted on my own was a maple mallet handle. I found it easier than the pine. Maybe I got lucky.
I suggested spindle turning as a start because I believe it is easier than bowl turning. With bowls you often end up with the cutting edge farther from the tool rest, and you have to deal with the constant challenge of both long and end grain twice in every revolution.
I had never turned bubinga until a few weeks ago. It turned very easily. My 9 year old and my 7 year old are doing very well with it. That was the reason for my recommendation. If it weren't for this I probably would have recommended pine purely for economy.
I have never turned green wood. I never wanted to mess with PEG and so I always turned seasoned wood. I don't know how much easier green juniper would be.GREG
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I rough out all my bowls green. I leave the wall thickness about 1-1/2” and let them dry for at least a year. I then remount them and finish turn, sand and apply the finish. At last count there are about 1200 rough blanks in the shop loft ranging from 4” to 18” dia. I lose less than 10% to checking as there is a lot of end grain in a bowl and they dry quite well just turning a bit oval in the process. Turning the green wood is excellent practice for tool control and it goes very fast. My best effort was 35 rough bowls in an a day, that was a lot of shavings.
Wow! You must have the patience of Job.
Do you have an idea what you want the bowl to look like before you rough it out, or do you decide a year down the line on the final design?GREG
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That is the best part, very little patience required, roughing the bowls is fast. And, if you make some every time you find a good log, you always have dry ones in the rotation. As to what they look like? Well, you get what you can from the log, and then after it dries, you can tell pretty well what you can turn from it. But, there are no rules, no plans, that is one of the most enjoyable things about turning, it is design as you go on the lathe.
Geesh Napie,
I'm a dial-up challenged Knothead so I'll resize these pics for you tomorrow when I get to work and have a DSL connection. It's so easy to do with Irfanview, and it retains a lot of the clarity of the original pics too.
If you need help with this just let me know as you've helped me many times.
To me Knots = debate which = sharing. Haven't graduated to bowls yet but am on track to it.
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Edited 6/6/2007 8:09 pm ET by KiddervilleAcres
I have no idea how to resize, so the help would be most welcome, thanks.
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Bowls are really very easy, you should get some fire wood and go for it.
Well, I acquired a couple of tons of green spalted maple and some green apple wood to practice on, along with my juniper. I hope I have some luck.
Napie,1. Download irfanview (free) from the WEB. Google irfanview and it will point you to their site; then install it on your PC. Assuming you have a PC as opposed to a MAC. Not sure if they have a MAC version.2. Open the pic with it, then click on Image to get the drop down menu and select Resize/Resample.3. Where it says Set new size, change the Units to inches. A good size for here is about 9 inches Width.4. Then click File, then Save as.... In the dialog box near the bottom make sure the Save as type is JPG - JPEG Files and in the box just above give it name. I usually put FWW at the front of mine so I know they have been posted to Knots, just my convention.This should give you a file size that will be much smaller but retain a fair amount of resolution as well. Many folks here use this same method and it works quite well.Any problems just let me know and I'll be more than happy to help you.Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
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