Rope twist beads

Ryan Mooney

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The Gorge Area, Oregon
For my swap project I've been adding some rope twist carving to some small beads. It's actually fairly easy to do and IMHO looks pretty nice. Not claiming that this is the only or best way to do it, but this is a relatively foolproof method :). Basically the same technique could be used to do a raised rope twist on a panel or platter edge.

As always suggestions for better ways welcome.

First lay out where the twist will go. I start out pretty steep, about 20 degrees from centerline when I measured it and lines about as far apart as the bead is wide. Obviously you can tune this for different sizes and angles, but the point is that the angle starts a lot steeper that the final twist angle will be. The lines will be the where the material is removed.
IMG_20150910_211251210_HDR.jpg

Now cut a shallow groove where each line was, I'm going about half way or maybe a smidge more to the background. This is the little palm skew chisel I'm using throughout.
IMG_20150910_211609631.jpg

Now with a series of 3-5 rocking cuts remove the heel from each of the parallelograms. I try to impart a bit of a curve to the shape while doing this. The bottom of the cut off at the groove I cut before and then progresses until it basically reaches the background where the new point is. I do all of one side.
IMG_20150910_211949292.jpg

And then the other. At this point its kind of a blocky version of where it ends up.
IMG_20150910_212310817.jpg

For small work like this, at this point I switch to a partial round needle file. You could continue to use a chisel but the file makes it easy to follow a line without creating divots.
IMG_20150910_212339488.jpg

Work around the perimeter rounding over the sides of the bead. You could certainly do this part ahead of time on the lathe and it would be more efficient, but I'm not confident enough to get the shape right so prefer the control here.
IMG_20150910_212429151.jpg

The shape is now a bit muddy.. But the sides are blended in nicely.
IMG_20150910_212645716.jpg

To clean up there lines take the needle file with the flat pointing in the direction of the twist and clean out the grooves a bit. The bottom of the groove should be real close to the background in the middle and at the background on the ends.
IMG_20150910_212719796.jpg

Starting to look closer.
IMG_20150910_212848131.jpg

Now you just round over the bumpy bits, and make sure the points terminate at the background (and transition smoothly) and your done.
IMG_20150910_213115563.jpg

Took way longer to take the pictures and write the past than to do.
 
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