Russian Olive pedestal box

Curt Fuller

Member
Messages
348
Location
North Ogden, Utah
This is some Russian Olive burl wood. It's bigger than any of these pedestal things I've ever done before, 13" tall by 6.5" across. The pedestal and finial are just some kind of mystery wood dyed black. I tried to replicate some of the shapes in the box in the finial and pedestal. The base of the pedestal and finial is similar to the box lid and then the flared out sections are similar to the body of the box. I kind of like the way the pedestal turned out but I'm still not sure about the finial. But after 3 tries on a finial I glued the sucker in and it's done.
 

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Man thats nice. That qualifies for calendar work to me. Both the inside and outside of wonderful. You brought the grain out fantasticly.

I dont know what i like more the inside or the outside. I think the inside is absolutely stunning.

Well done.:thumb: Send a pic to Vaughn for the calendar if its not too late.:)
 
Hey Curt!!!
The first thing I noticed was the progression of the stem to the cup...really nice! Flair on the cup is outstanding and the finial follows the stem and cup. It does not get better than that :woohoo::champagne:
 
Curt I am not a big fan of tall skinney finals or stems but you have made botu work with the piece. The only negative I can see is the lid doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the piece. It's the only part that from my eye doesn't flow. JMHO and we all know what opions are worth.
 
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Thanks all of you for the comments. I appreciate it.

The only negative I can see is the lid doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the piece. It's the only part that from my eye doesn't flow. JMHO and we all know what opions are worth.

Don, I agree. I had this nice hunk of burl but I didn't have anything like it for the lid. So I just used a plain piece of face grain russian olive. I wish I would have had another piece of burl for the lid.
 
Thanks all of you for the comments. I appreciate it.



Don, I agree. I had this nice hunk of burl but I didn't have anything like it for the lid. So I just used a plain piece of face grain russian olive. I wish I would have had another piece of burl for the lid.

glad you agree with me, I think if you would have done something, maybe an ogee shape would help:huh::dunno:, don't know heck I'm just another wood butcher.
 
glad you agree with me, I think if you would have done something, maybe an ogee shape would help:huh::dunno:, don't know heck I'm just another wood butcher.

This is kind of a long story but you might be interested in the evolution of this lid.....Here's where I usually get myself in trouble when I turn something. When I first got this to the nearly done stage i brought it in from the garage and showed it to my wife. Her first reaction was "I don't like the domed lid and I think the finial is too tall". So I showed some pics of it to a couple other turning friends and came away with a unanimous conclusion that the finial was too tall. I turned a shorter finial, didn't like it much, turned another (the present one) and decided it was as good as I was going to get. BUT, then I though it would look better if the lid weren't quite so domed. So I put the metal back to the lid and took most of the ogee type form it had off. It still has a slight curve but not much. I sat it on the box and thought it looked pretty good with the exception that I wished it was burl wood. But now, the hole I had drilled for the finial was gone so I had to re-drill that. The lid is now pretty thin so I measured, marked the forstner bit, and then drilled a gnats eyelash too deep and punched through the bottom of the lid. I've never had any luck trying to make the bottom of a finial stem fit flush inside a lid so I decided to just leave the finial tenon long and put a ball on the inside of the lid. So anyway, as you can see this lid was a real project for me. At some point, probably back at the original I should have thrown in the towel and called it good.
Here's a pic with the first finial and taller lid and the ball repair for drilling through the lid.
 

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