From one woodturner to another

Hi.

This is Travis Corcoran, president of SmartFlix.

I’m not writing today to pitch any of our videos to you - in fact, after this sentence, there’s only one reference to a video anywhere in this email.

I’m writing as one wood turner (well, an amateur wood turner) to another to talk about some of my recent projects, note a few things I’ve seen on the web (any links I give are just things I found interesting - I don’t get any money for linking to blogs or projects or tools!), and ask about what you’re doing on the lathe.

SmartFlix isn’t a huge organization, but we’ve got a great customer support person (Craig), and a great marketing person (Katherine) who writes newsletters - every two weeks we send out one general purpose newsletter, one for arts and crafts, and one for metalworking.

The upshot of having these two folks on staff is that I don’t have as much contact with customers as I used to, and I miss that.

Since I’m an amateur woodturner myself (we started the company with just a few metalworking and a few woodturning DVDs), I thought I’d start up a small woodturning newsletter, send out my thoughts and some links to the small community of woodturning folks here at SmartFlix (well, not that small - there are over 3,000 of us!), and see if I couldn’t recapture a bit of the fun that I used to have.

So, enough introductory junk - on with the show!

Recent tool purchase

About six months ago I picked up the Oneway Easy-Core system for my Powermatic, in anticipation of some friends cutting down a massive Norway Maple and giving me some logs from it. All in all, I like the Easy-Core, but I have to admit that having 60+ lbs of not-perfectly-centered wood throwing itself back and forth on my lathe (even at relatively low speeds) scares the spit out of me. Also, at the slow speeds I core at, the cutting knife can dig in a bit if I hit a slightly soft or punky section of the wood.

I chose the Easy-Core over some of the competing coring systems after a fair bit of reading. I liked the fact that the cutters swung on a fixed path, thus eliminating most of the catches that one might normally get.

The construction is massive and overdone (just how I like it!), and the replaceable cutter system seems very well thought out.

The two-tool system (one cutter, one swinging support arm) is a little bit kludgey, and requires that the user keep relocating one of the tools throughout the process…but you get used to it pretty quickly.

All in all, I’d call the Easy-Core somewhat pricey, but worth the coin, especially if you get nice logs that you want to get lots of bowls out of more than once or twice during the year.

More information here: http://oneway.ca/coring/index.htm

Next planned project

I’ve got two nieces, one nephew, and two god kids, and I really like to make homemade Christmas presents for all of them (and my two parents, two brothers, several parents of sisters-in-law … you get the idea!). Grownups tend to get bowls or peppermills (the trick is to keep track of who’s gotten what so that no one ends up with three peppermills over three years!), but turned presents for kids are a bit harder to think up.

I recently stumbled across these plans for a kid’s train whistle. The plan shows a square cross section body, but I don’t see why a roughing gouge and a skew chisel can’t be applied …

Anyway, once Autumn rolls around in New England, I’ll start panicking that Christmas is just a few months off, and head down to the shop to make a few of these:

http://www.binkyswoodworking.com/TrainWhistlePlan.html

Other cool stuff on the web

I’ve recently taken to reading woodturning blogs, and I really enjoy them. I’ve selected a few posts from around the web that I liked:

Rob at ShavedWood combines old glass electrical insulators and lathe-turned wood to make “lighthouses”. What a wacky / cool project idea! I’m going to keep my eye out for some of these insulators - I’d love to do this project myself.

http://www.shavedwood.com/2008/02/10/lighthouse-project/

Steven D. Russell over at Woodturning Videos Plus (no relation to us!) has a great long post on ergonomics at the lathe. From anti-fatigue mats on the floor, to solutions to “Turner’s Elbow”, Steven has a lot of great tips on keeping turning a fun hobby, and not a torture test for your aching body.

http://www.woodturningvideosplus.com/woodturning.html

My two god kids (aged 4 and 7) like to get lathe lessons on the weekend. The four year old is a bit young to do anything more than lay his hands on the handle of a gouge as I move it back and forth, but the seven year old is capable of understanding things like the proper bevel-first presentation of a tool to wood, cutting from the larger diameter to the smaller, etc. Darrell Feltmate over at Glendale Crafts mentions some rules of thumb for picking appropriate projects for beginners.

http://glendalecrafts.com/wood-turning/wood-turning-projects-what-is-a-beginner-wood-turner-to-do

I find it all too easy to get caught up in tool catalogs - I flip through a catalog, and see a new patented ultr-fine-mist-dispersal-finishing system with built in compressor and twin microprocessors, and I find myself thinking “Yes! Yes! This is what I need! Why, with out this $5,000 tool, there’s really no way that I can be expected to put a finish on a bowl.” …and then, a few minutes later, sanity returns, and I recall that a bit of finish on a clean white rag does a pretty darned good job. It’s good to be reminded that sometimes we can do a job with a homemade tool that costs 75 cents in materials just as well (or even better) than we can with some expensive new device delivered off the back of a truck. Darrell Feltmate (same guy; different website!) has an article on making your own “sanding disk machine” out of a bit of scrap plywood, a bolt, a few nuts, and some sandpaper. Nice way to save money!

http://aroundthewoods.com/sander.shtml

The one time I’m going to mention a video in this email

I recently rented Making a Peppermill with Ted Sokolowski, and I really enjoyed it.

I’ve seen several how-to DVDs, and this is at the top of the pack as far as production quality. The video is well lit, shot with good equipment, expertly edited, and very very well scripted.

Ted is a great teacher, with a very calm, clear demeanor - but without being boring or sleep inducing. He’s clearly thought out all of his lines ahead of time, which means that there are no “umms” or “ahhs”, or pointless digressions.

The video does not go deeply into proper use of turning tools (there are several other good videos at SmartFlix that cover this), and the upside of this is that the video can spend its entire length talking about:

* design process for turning a peppermill tricks and tips

The design bit (including laying out the mill on a wood blank to use features in the wood to best effect) was outstanding. A lot of artists talk about design, but - in my experience - the vast majority of them use a vocabulary that is imprecise and vague. Ted does a great job of explaining WHY he likes a certain curve or shape (his most memorable phrase compares components of the overall shape to “water balloons” - it makes a lot of sense! Go watch it!).

The process is also quite straightforward - I’ve made several peppermills before watching this video, and his process clearly does a much better job than mine. Every step is well thought out, and is there for a reason, and this results in clean holes, concentric parts, a nice surface, and a good finish. The “process” section is the longest part of the video, and that’s a great thing!

Finally, the tricks and tips are also great.

Five out of five lightbulbs!

http://smartflix.com/store/video/5860/Making-a-Peppermill

Your feedback

I’d love to hear what projects you are all up to. I’d also like to hear any questions you have for me.

And, finally, I’d like to hear any ideas you have for the future of SmartFlix. Over the last 9 months or so we have kept adding DVDs to our inventory, but we haven’t added many features to our website. The reason why is that we were busy launching a second business (an online comic book store called HeavyInk.com … what can I say? I’m a bit geek http://heavyink.com/user/1).

But, now that we’ve got the comic book store up and running, we’re switching our engineering efforts back to SmartFlix. We’ve got a new feature launching in a few weeks which is an online project competition - folks (SmartFlix customers or not - no purchase necessary!) upload a picture of something they’ve made in the shop with a brief description, then we throw the voting open to everyone on the net, and the winner gets a prize (for the first contest, we’re thinking $250 in cash).

So: that project is already in the pipeline … but what other features would you like to see? We’ve tossed around the idea of user pages with galleries to upload your work. We’ve talked about discussion forums (”fora” ?). We’ve talked about a wiki-like feature so that folks can share tips and hints about various projects or crafts. The common thing about all of these ideas is that we’re not limiting ourselves to just pushing the DVD rental - we want to come up with new features that deliver value to folks, and help build a community.

So - please write to me with your recent projects, your questions, your ideas, or other feedback .