Ed Kelle Workshop – Applying Enhancements

Its been a hectic few weeks and I’ve finally gotten a few moments to reflect on the great workshop I attended last month. The Chesapeake Woodturners sponsored a one day workshop with guest artist Ed Kelle . Ed has a background in fine arts and bring some unique ideas to the craft of wood turning. Of late he has been adding different embellishments to basic turned wood objects and he style and teaching manner really helped me see several new techniques that can take ordinary wood turning for wow to sculpture.

For the workshop we concentrated on turning a mini-blossom and then using a variety of tools off the lathe to carve and enhance the simple turning into something unexpected. We start with a block of dry hardwood roughly 3 by 3 by 4 inches. For this exercise we used walnut and cherry, but any basic hardwood works for these techniques.

Secure the blank in a four jaw chuck and begin by rough turning to a cylinder. Turning the bowl portion of the blossom is similar to turning a goblet. Start with the outside shape – see the attached sketch for dimensions and basic shape. Leave sufficient wood on the headstock end of the turning to permit carving of the blossom stem.

Once the outside has taken its basic form drill a 3/8″ pilot hole to a predetermined depth to mark the bottom of the inside of the blossom. Hollow the inside of the blossom taking care to match the exterior shape and finish with a wall thickness of about 1/8″. Remember that we are going to sand the interior and carve the exterior so too thin a wall thickness could lead to holes in the final blossom. Finish the interior of the blossom using scrapers and sandpaper to at least 400 grit.

Now that the interior of the blossom is finished it is time to visualize the stem making sure that the length of the stem runs parallel to the grain to resist snapping off the stem during the carving process. Once you have determined the basic layout of the stem, excess wood is cut away using a Japanese saw while the piece is still in the chuck. This helps to minimize the carving time and helps the eye see the stem as you carve. We used three cuts at various rotations to remove about 50% of the excess wood.

Now the carving begins. Using a Dremel tool and a small sanding drum the stem is “carved” from the stock remaining after the Turning and cutaway process is completed. Make sure you wear protection for your eyes and respiration as this process creates a lot of dust. In the workshop it took me about 40 minutes to shape the stem of my mini-blossom. The one key to remember is that we are going to use a small diamond disk to add the “veining” enhancement to the exterior of the blossom and we must make sure the disk can reach the bottom of any curves in the stem without aggressively removing material for the sides of the curve. Ed’s suggestion was to keep the disk you plan to use handy and check often.

With the shaping of the stem completed the next step in creating the blossom is to carve the petals on the rim of the blossom. An even number of petals always seems to look unnatural so for this blossom we chose 5 petals as the proper number.

Now it was time to start the veining effects using a diamond encrusted disk that fits in the Dremel tool. Using short pulling strokes the disk both burns and cuts the exterior of the turning to create a veining effect. Lots of over lapping strokes and accepting the basic premise that random looks more natural than perfect parallel alignment increases the visual effect of the veining. Make sure you “cut through” the edges of the petals to complete the effect and to smooth the edges of the petals to blend them into the interior and exterior of the blossom. One nice benefit of this form of enhancement is that the exterior of the Turning needs littler initial and no final sanding.

Veining is a technique that works well on a variety of pieces. Ed’s philosophy is to try it. After all at worse its only firewood.