I wanted to share a little project with you on a display case I'm making for the Taneytown History Museum. The bottom will be a basic wood box, while the top (what you see here) will be a Plexiglas or acrylic top. Many people assume that these tops are made by gluing the Plexiglas together, but they are not glued. Glue does not work well. Making a case top involves welding the Plexiglas with an acrylic cement. Smelly, as well as thinner than water, it presents it's challenges.

The joint where the 2 pieces of Plexiglas come together need to be tight. They also need to NOT be touching anything else. They must be pressing against each other AND suspended in the air. The cement is applied to the joint of the 2 pieces of Plexiglas and the cement chases the joint through capillary action. The cement melts the 2 pieces of Plexiglas and over the course of a number of hours the area where the Plexiglas melts becomes one, just like in welding steel.

Wood is all around us. Fortunately, I have a number of folks who think of me when they have trees cut down on their properties. A friend of mine, Tim, came along to help with cutting and loading the wood. Mike, the owner, also provided a hand loading the wood onto my trailer. I’m always thankful for help.

We had trunks from one pin oak, one red maple and two honey locusts. The wood was wet and very heavy.

As we loaded we could see the back-end of the truck sinking and the tires of the trailer showing signs of a very heavy load. Before pulling out we moved a number of chunks of wood from the front of the trailer to the back to improve the balance of the load.

I’ve been working on many turned pieces in Weeping Cherry, mostly bowls, but some candle holders for 3″ pillar candles. Here are a good selection of photos taken by Kelly Heck Photography, showing off the Weeping Cherry.

Here’s a quick look at a medium maple bowl, freshly roughed out on the new lathe. I roughed it out green – it had some moisture in it, but it was not very wet. The bark peeled off fairly easy … some of it flew off during turning. The result is a very pretty natural edge bowl. I wanted to show this to give you an idea of one of the challenges in turning natural edge bowls. Look at the crispness of the edge of the bowl as it spins. The edge is very sharp - when the speed is turned up to 800 - 1,200 RPM, those shard edges can you you quickly. So the warning on turning these bowls is to always be aware of where your body is in proximity to the spinning edge of that bowl.

Here’s a little experiment with a piece of maple this evening. The lighting isn’t great, but I wanted to get a couple quick photos. This Norway maple has nice color.

SHOP TIME!!!! I knocked out a good number of pieces yesterday, including these pictured. Rough-turned bowls in-progress… they will have to dry for about 3 months before I finish them. The first image is a bowl I've wrapped in paper for drying. I write the date and type of wood on each wrapped bowl so I can identify the wood without unwrapping the piece.

I took a break this afternoon to do a little wood-turning. So, yes, I’m posting a few more photos of wood – what can I say, I’ve been busy and having fun! The first image was taken inside – the other 4 were taken outside. These pieces are green (wet) and have no oil or other finish on them yet. Note that these are all from the same tree trunk!