Here's My Woodturning!

by Kevin Harris

Note: click any picture to see a larger version.

We bought a new set of knives for the Kitchen but we needed a knife block. I looked at knife blocks that were available from stores and wasn't really happy with the way they looked or their sizing for a generic set of knives. I originally started out with the idea of designing a rectangular knife block but then was inspired to do it as a turning when I saw a lighthouse on a trip to the coast.

I laid out the location, angle and depth of the grooves for each size of knife using a drafting program which allowed me to stagger the handles and also make sure that the ends of the blades didn't stick out the back of the block.

After resawing the block and cutting the grooves for the knives with a router, I stabilized each section of the spalted maple with miniwax wood hardener which also made the grooves water resistant. I surfaced each mating face of the maple in a planer before using epoxy to glue the block together. I used a drill press and forstner bit to bore a 1 1/2" hole in the bottom of the block and epoxied in a cocobolo dowel that I turned to fit.

I didn't own a woodworking lathe so I started turning the project using a metal lathe that I had access to. I used the dowel in a chuck plus a live center to mount the piece in the lathe. I trued up both ends of the block on the lathe using a parting tool and then started turning the taper using a single point HSS tool meant for turning metal. After experiencing some bad tearout with the single point tool, I ground a gouge out of a piece of HSS and that worked much better. I trued up the taper while finishing on the lathe using a flat piece of wood as a sanding block.

I really enjoyed the first part of the turning on the metal lathe, but realized I probably wasn't using the right tool for the job, so I turned the top and bottom caps using a friend's General Lathe and turning tools. After finishing this project I bought a small Grizzly lathe and have turned some pens out of both wood and acrylic, drawer pulls, and then cocobolo legs and spindles for a shaker bench. I would like to try some bowl turning next but I think I will take a course and then perhaps buy a bigger lathe with more options for lower turning speeds.

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You can email Kevin at eskevin@yahoo.com .

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