Seemed like a good idea at the time

Lee DeRaud

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If I'm not mistaken, there are some name-brand turners doing this, so don't laugh too hard.
Bowl is 5-1/2"x3", candle holder is 5-1/2"x2-3/4".
Bowl35_1.JPGBowl35_2.JPGCandle Holder 10.JPG
Yup, it's baltic birch plywood, 15mm (a tick under 5/8") times nine layers. Interesting stuff to work with: turns very nicely...if you ignore that fact that all you get is dust, no curls, not even many visible chips.
 
That is realy something, would you mind sharing how you did the glue up.
Brute force and massive ignorance, same as everything else I do.:p

Short answer: I had a bunch of those 22"x22" squares from Rockler and a bottle of Titebond III.

Long answer: Ripped some 3"x22" strips on the table saw and glued them up in groups of three...at that point I decided on "9" as the magic number (which determined the width/diameter of the blank), chopped them into 5-1/2" long chunks, and glued them up three at a time. (Probably could have done the glue-up in one pass, but I wasn't sure what dimensions I was going for when I started.)

Rough-round on the bandsaw and scrape enough glue off to get a flat spot to screw in a 2" faceplate. After that, it's just like any other wood...except that "grain direction" is a bit, um, ambiguous.

I did discover on the first one that my normal method of using thick CA to glue on a "chuck disk" doesn't work with this stuff...ended up using epoxy, which is a hassle. For the candle holder I just turned a regular tenon in the plywood. Next time I'll just make the blanks a little thicker to account for that.
 
Looks awful nice Lee, maybe you could try o.s.b. next and see how that turns for ya.

It is hard to believe that such a beautiful job was accomplished using plywood.
 
That looks SWEET!

Boy I tell ya, you turners are gonna get me in trouble! I've always loved the lathe but it's been a LONG time since I've used one. Seeing stuff like that makes me want to start turning. But right now business is so slow I've barely got a pot to pee in let alone finding money for a lathe. :( Oh well maybe when things pick up I'll have a new tool gloat to post here. :)

Nice work Lee.

John
 
Very interesting. It's amazing all the things people find to turn. Saw something turned from a pinecone not too long ago.

Yep. Someone on smc was turning corncobs :eek: into pens.
They looked fantastic:)
 
I really like it, Lee. I've always liked the way stripes transfer across a curved surface, and the ply makes an easy way to capitalize on that look. :thumb:
 
cool stuff lee! i`ve seen some sculpture done with baltic over the years but these are the first turnings i`ve seen.....be interesting to play with the grain orientation during glue-up? bet you could come up with some really wild effects......tod
 
Interesting stuff to work with: turns very nicely...if you ignore that fact that all you get is dust, no curls, not even many visible chips.


Huh? What are curls? :huh:

That is really cool, Lee. Could never tell it was plywood. I like Steve's idea. Why don't you try some osb for us:D .

George
 
I like Steve's idea. Why don't you try some osb for us:D .
You people are evil. :eek:

The scary part is, I'm thinking about it. The only problem is scale: the chunks in OSB are big enough that I think it would take a much larger piece for the "pattern" to work. Something in the 14-16" range (or even bigger) might be cool, but it's way out of reach of a Jet Mini.

(And no, I'm not going to buy a bigger lathe just to turn OSB. )
 
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