Woodturning – 2025

A Scroll Saw Bowl – December

An experiment to mix scroll sawing with woodturning. Lots of ideas where some beautiful scroll saw patterns can be inserted into wood turned items. This bowl is just a beginning piece, experimenting with different blades.

The woodturning Club is looking to expand the shed and the options available to people and the topic of scroll saw came up. From a single square of pine board, only about 10mm thick, I drew up this pattern, cut out all the zig-zags and then glued them together. A handy little gizmo bowl.

Snoopy

An interesting experiment to turn Snoopy out of some left-over wood. A nice size for kids to hold (gently) and hopefully provide lots of enjoyment.

Malee Burl Biro – December

The Malee Burl timber was given to me by the Club president, Ray. He showed me how to get a fine finish on the timber as there is no grain. It can easily shatter, and you need sharp chisels and lots of patience to get this out. However, it was finished with super glue and fine sawdust to seal all the cracks and then high gloss spray varnish. Turned out magnificent.

Candle or Tea Light

This Candle stick is made from construction timber. Merbau is used for its strength, and it comes up beautifully when sanded and polished. A hard timber and you need sharp tools. It’s 60mm across the top and will suit most candles but I turned out a wooden candle from Hoop Pine and drilled a hole in the centre to accept a Tea Light Candle. So now, the candle will never shrink or leak wax all over my beautiful work and all you have to do is replace the tea light in the middle. It’s already November and the year is nearly over already.

Xmas Tree Decoration – October

Very delicate turning to get the finials down to 3 mm but it worked. The centre piece is made from segmented pieces of Rose Gum. The Finials are made from Pink Beach.

Jacaranda Lidded Vase

This log of Jacaranda had a pretty solid cover of bark, so I thought to protect it in the turning. The difficult part was that it was also a joining of two branches and the further I dug into the log, the more it changed to soft, blotting paper bark. Reinforced with supa glue then polished.

Orange Box Wood Pen – August

Made my first Slimline pen. As the name suggests, it is supposed to be slim, but I can’t hold it properly, so I made it better suited to be able to write comfortably with it. There are over eight different varieties of pens you can make and I believe the ‘European’ version might suit my fingers better. Next time.

Camphor Outside Bowl

Anna liked this one. Called it a peanut bowl. Cut from a small piece of square Camphor Laurel, my woodturning buddy Steve, showed me how to leave the square in place and cut the bowl out from the opposite side. This gives the impression of a sunken bowl. I rounded the edges with a scroll saw and then hand sanded the corners.

Lidded Jar – June

This is a lidded jar. The fit was exceptional so you can hardly see where the join is. The most intriguing part was the insert into the lid. A piece of a Burl inserted in a tiny ring of Norfolk Hibiscus. Polished and finished nicely with Danish Oil.

Jacaranda Vase – May

I wasn’t really happy with the Camphor Laurel Vase so I tried again but this time I used Jacaranda and Australian Red Cedar as the contrasting colour. It turned out a lot better. It does have a glass test tube inside so if you wished, a little bit of water and a flower would look great. It was also awarded First Prize in the Mudgeeraba Show for 2025.

Camphor Laurel Vase with extra Trimmings

I picked this piece of Camphor Laurel at the beginning of April because it had a rich, very dark colouring and it would have been offset nicely by the Crows Ash segments, which are a light-yellow colour. You can imagine then a rich, dark lashing of red offset with bands of yellow. At least that was the plan. When I turned away the outside layer of the Camphor, it revealed lots of pale colours. It was also awarded Second Prize in the Mudgeeraba Show for 2025.

Segmented Turning a Pencil Holder

Segmented turning is a new learning experience for me. This is made from Australian Rose Gum. A few hours of glueing all the segments together before you can even start to think about turning and polishing. It was also awarded Second Prize in the Mudgeeraba Show for 2025.

African Mahogany Bowl – April

African Mahogany is also known as Khaya senegalensis. Traditionally this tree was used to carve out canoes. It doesn’t have a lot of character when it is turned but as the picture shows, the colour is quite similar to Teak. This bowl was finished with friction polish. It was also awarded Second Prize in the Mudgeeraba Show for 2025.

Laminated Merbau Bowl

Merbau flooring that I glued together into a reasonable block of wood. Hard wood to turn and you need sharp chisels. Sanded this to 600 then used Yorkshire paste to finish of the sanding process. A final coat of friction polish made it feel nice and smooth. It was also awarded First Prize in the Mudgeeraba Show for 2025.

Avocado Bowl – March

A nice lump of Avocado that had dried out over many years but unfortunately developed some cracks. You can see the one running down the length of the bowl and through the lid, but I did manage to fill it with supa glue and some very fine Redwood sawdust. I sanded this to 600 grit then applied Yorkshire Grit, and finally a coat of friction polish. It was also awarded First Prize in the Mudgeeraba Show for 2025.

Long Neck Vase – March

and – Huon Pine Art

On the left is the second long neck vase turned from Silky Oak, but this time the soft bark was still quite prominent on one side. I used some black dye to colour it and then sanded it back to give it the appearance of it surviving a bush fire. This vase has had 5 coats of friction polish applied 24 hours apart. The biggest problem was the bark soaking up all the polish.

On the Right is a Huon Pine piece of waste wood that my mate Dave picked up in Tasmania from the boat building school. It had a large gaping hole in the side but once turned round, it became a feature. I applied Danish Oil to the piece as it was the best product to be soaked up by the rotting timber and still provide a good finish once the oil cured. The contrast between the black and the creamy coloured wood is fantastic. Note that I left the square base which was the original size of the scrap timber. It was also awarded First Prize in the Mudgeeraba Show for 2025.

Segmented Turning a Wooden Spoon Holder

My good mate Dave – had some floor boards that had been discarded from the Queens Wharf in an upgrade. This timber is 130 years old and the boards were of a variety of timbers. Because I had just started a Segmented Turning Program to learn this difficult task, the first steps was to trim the boards and plane them down to the same size for each board. Once that was achieved we cut them into 130 pieces, or segments, and glued them together to form 10 wheels. As you can imagine, the next step was to glue all the wheels together and progressively turn the structure into a vessel that would hold my wooden spoons. Not too bad for a first effort but there are three mistakes in this project. It was also awarded First Prize in the Mudgeeraba Show for 2025.

Long Neck Vase

Red Cedar Bowl

Middle of February and a Red Cedar bowl that was finished with Spray lacquer. The colour is a lot richer and shows off the red brilliantly. No wood sealer was applied beforehand, just sandpaper carefully to 600 grit. I cut out the bird picture from the same wood on a scroll saw and left it raised just a half millimetre. When you stand the bowl on a bench it creates a dark shadow underneath the bowl giving it the impression of a disappearing base. It was also awarded First Prize in the Mudgeeraba Show for 2025.

A Small Ship’s Steering Wheel

An interesting piece that was designed months ago on paper, then, after buying some timber from Bunnings, I used the detail gouge to turn out the 8 handles. Actually, there were 12 handles but 4 of them hit the bin. The wood was called Eucalyptus Grandi or Rose Gum because it has a subtle pinkish tinge. I had to stain them in Jarrah stain to set them off against the silky oak ring. The size was all based on the 32mm diameter clock face in the centre, so it is probably a third of the size of a real one. Finally finished at the end of January 2025 and now sits in our bookcase. It was also awarded First Prize in the Mudgeeraba Show for 2025.

Australian Red Cedar Bowl

Interested to show you this. From a half log of Red Cedar to a beautiful useable bowl. A special feature showing a protruded ring with some burn detail to get you excited. This was finished early in the New Year after recovering from holiday celebrations.

Silky Oak Fancy Jewellery Bowl

A nice piece of silky oak and some fancy practice on burning in the black feature rings. It’s a medium container probably suitable on your bedside table to place all your jewellery in and maybe delicate earrings in the outer layer.