The Gift

Hi all,
Recently, I have been turning a few bigger things. Nothing gigantic, manly bowls that were much bigger than lidded boxes and pens. The most recent larger thing I made was a t light holder, which I made for my half brother from Finland. I am giving it him tomorrow when he leaves to return to his family in Helsinki, so he hasn't seen it yet. However, I'm sure he'll like it because it will come in handy on those days in the winter when, in his neck of the woods,  it virtually stays dark all day and he'd have a job to spot a moose in his own garden.

For the pyrography decoration I drew an oak leaf onto some paper and then transferred it to the wood using "tracedown" paper. If you haven't tried this product yet, I can highly recommend it. I wanted to keep the pattern simple and I think I have achieved that. The pyrography work was all done with a Peter Childs machine, which as usual, was equipped with a spoon tip.
Here's a couple of pictures.

The profile of the project didn't quite come out as I wanted it because it should have had more of an ogee shape.

I couldn't manage the ogee shape because the base part was too wide and that was caused by me choosing the large jaws for my chuck instead of the medium ones. Anyway, I was too damn lazy to change the jaws so I had to compromise on the shape. The things is, I reconciled my lazyness by telling myself that the wider bottom would be safer because it would be more stable. The last thing I would need was a phone call from Finland saying he'd knocked my t light holder over and burnt his log cabin to the ground.

I enjoyed turning this item and I enjoyed the simple pyrography, but I didn't like the dust that it created. So I am beginning to understand what type of item I like turning. My favourites are pens, but I have had to slow down on production because I'm getting over run with them. I did open a shop on https://folksy.com/shops/samspens, but their search facility doesn't work well with the items I was selling. The statistics for my shop showed that I was getting less than one visitor a week, if that's possible. So that enterprise was not a roaring success and I shall just let it wind down until all my listings have expired. I'm still wondering if it worth having a go on http://www.etsy.co.uk. which also deals with handmade goods, I will let you know if I go down that route.

Anyway, I have discovered that I have leaning towards turning small items and in my next post I will show you the smallest thing I have turned so far. My wife thinks it's cute and I guess she right.