Gary is known for his beautiful and unusual boxes, which retail in the $300 to $900 price range. Most are about 10 inches in maximum diameter, wing tip to wing tip. They are composed of 4 parts: FINIAL, LID, TOP and BOTTOM. The TOP is where the most interesting and unusual turning and carving is done, with design inspirations coming from automobile mag wheels, jewelry, cathedral ceilings, logos, modern furniture, etc. Only kiln dried wood is used, for stability.

The piece to the right shows a typical approach of alternating light and dark woods; the slotted TOP is dark, of walnut or cocobolo. The BOTTOM is about ½ the total size, or about 5 inches in diameter, and is suspended about 3/8 inch off the surface by the two feet at the ends of the TOP. It is glued to the TOP after turning a lidded box joint that snap fits it in place. The LID and FINIAL are last. Gary prefers to use a variety of chucks to hold all his turned pieces.

Gary started the demo by using a 4-jaw chuck with two opposing jaws removed. He centered a piece of walnut 2 inches thick by 3 inches wide by 10 inches long in this chuck, and turned a 1+ inches deep by 1 ½ inches dia. round mortise with a recessed tenon about ¾ inch dia. in the center. This walnut piece was formed to become the TOP.

He mentioned that the 2 jaw chuck approach also allowed easy repositioning of the TOP for off-center turning, which would allow creating a piece with 3 or more boxes along its length, limited only by the distance from lathes center to bed.

Next, he superglued two pieces of scrap poplar, one to each side of the walnut. These had been bandsaw cut with rounded ends so that the whole assembly of 3 pieces was 10+ inches dia. and ready for further turning. The scrap pieces prevent tearing and other turning problems as one completes the turning of the TOP.

Next, he mounted a piece of scrap poplar 3 inches square and 2 inches deep in a 4 jaw chuck, and turned a shallow tenon to fit the walnut mortise (1 ½ inches dia.) and then trued the remaining block to 3 inches diameter as a gauge for the LID.

Then, the rough TOP was reversed and press fit onto the waste block tenon, the tailstock brought up to clamp all in place, and what would become the upper surface of the TOP turned on the headstock side, with a bowl gouge held at an acute slicing angle (end of handle very low) to give smooth cuts and eliminate tearout making it ready for final fine sanding.

From the tailstock side he used a traditional diamond parting tool, set in a downsloping handle for better control, and plunge cut at a 45 degree angle to remove a center core from the walnut. This scrap piece contained the ¾ inches dia. tenon that had been earlier made from the other side. (It might make a nice spinning top, or a LID for a different box!) The tailstock was then removed.

Gary has made a number of small tools, for undercutting when doing fine work, from ¼ inch and 3/8 inch diameter high speed steel drill rods. One is like a short tipped screwdriver bit, another with that type design but the cutting edge is curved. One scraper was even made from a dart with a bolt screwed into the de-feathered rear and the tip carefully ground back to form a tiny scraper!

Next came the tricky part of forming the undersurface of the TOP, with careful undercutting done after a bowl gouge does the initial hollowing work. (Time did not allow for deep undercutting.)

During this process a very unexpected safety lesson was learned. The tip of the bowl gouge caught at the glue joint between walnut and poplar, and the bowl flew apart. The loose poplar piece instantly whacked into the CMW club's Plexiglas safety barrier, brilliantly put in place by two members, or at least one audience member would have received a painful if not damaging impact! The other part flew off and behind Gary against a far wall. Miraculously nobody was hurt AND the two parts fortunately were OK and reassembled along the same glue line, with even greater care, using plenty of medium density superglue and spray accelerator. After a short breath-catching break, the demo continued.

Here you can see the TOP (with one piece of the scrap poplar removed by sawing along the glue joint from both ends) with the initial undercutting done by bowl gouge. Note the hollow tenon ready to receive the BOTTOM at a later time. One trick he uses is to cut such tenons inward at a slight angle, and then slightly round its edge so that the inner mortise lip of the BOTTOM piece, also tapered slightly inward toward the upper rims edge, will snap into place when pressed on (and later glued with 5 minute epoxy). The upper part of the TOP is about 3/16 inches thick, and Gary spent considerable time with calipers, pencil marks, and fine cuts to achieve that even thickness. The two walnut ends (that look like arrowheads) would normally be recess cut to a much greater degree with Gary's special tools, but time did not permit this work that day. Gary likes a slightly extended tenon with internal mortise on the underside of the TOP to give added girder strength in that area, since it is so close to the side edges, instead of mortising the TOP and fitting the BOTTOM tenon directly therein.

Some tricks he passed along: 1) use a 3/16 inch drill bit as a time saving gap tester between the outer tips of the double end calipers to see how bowl thickness is coming along ... and always measure on the hardwood (walnut in this case) instead of the softer poplar scrap. 2) You can sense the smoothness of the curve, as undercutting is done, by stopping the lathe and letting the light reflect off the glue line. It will show abrupt radius changes. 3) A small, round skew will not edge-catch inside small diameter mortises.

At this point Gary carefully parted through the TOP inside the tenon in the center, and removed the core, where the LID would later fit.

It is at this state of completion that the design for cutouts and shape of the TOP would be penciled onto the upper surface. Time did not allow this work to be done. He uses a variety of plastic mechanical drawing templates to match the layout to his concept for the piece. A tapered burr with spiral cut, from J&L Industrial Supply (1-800-521-9520, or http://www.jlindustrial.com), in a drill press set for high speed, is used to make the slots and other cutouts, by moving the wood TOP on the drill press table very slowly under and into the tapered burr. A bandsaw with 10 tpi blade cuts the outer edges of the design, with the table tilted for sloping cuts that add a 3-D effect. Jewelry files, sandpaper running 320 to 1000 grit, then jewelry cloth 2500 to 4000 grit, produce a polished surface finally finished with oil and wax. 30 to 40 hours would normally be in vested so far ... too much for a one-day demo.

So, to see the inner profile of the TOP, Gary next used a skill saw to cut in from both ends along the glue line and snapped off one of the side pieces of scrap poplar. This allowed a side view from which the shape of the maple Bottom could be determined and then turned.

Gary chucked a piece of maple about 2 ½ inches thick and trued it to 5 inches diameter. Then he cut the mortise to snap fit into the tenon located underside of the walnut TOP, and shaped the upper maple surface to closely match the adjacent underside of the walnut TOP. He then bowl gouged a cavity to be the jewelry holding inside of the BOTTOM. The inner lip was tapered so the outer edge was slightly smaller, and the BOTTOM unit would then snap fit onto the TOP's tenon.

Using a plastic jawed chuck he then positioned the BOTTOM thereon, plastic jaws expanding outward for a grip inside the BOTTOM's jewelry well. He used a depth gauge to determine the total height of the BOTTOM, allowing for it to float 3/8 inch above the table surface, suspended by the two arms of the TOP. He then turned for total height and outer shape. Normally it would then be sanded, snap fit, and epoxy glued at the rim into place under the walnut TOP. Using a 4 jaw chuck on a small piece of maple, Gary turned the 3 inches dia. TOP, with its tenon undersized for a loose fit so it would not bind some months or years in the future as further wood drying occurred. In turning the LID's underside he hollowed it somewhat, but left the very center thicker, where it would later be drilled from the other side for the walnut FINIAL.

This TOP was flipped over and inserted into a jamb chuck made of scrap wood, and the top of the TOP turned to size and shape. A stub drill in a chuck in the tailstock was brought up and a FINIAL hole drilled in the TOP, just deep enough for the FINIAL's small tenon.

Finally, a small square of walnut was chucked and the tiny FINIAL delicately turned, tenon outward. The remaining square was drilled for the tenon, and the FINIAL reversed and set into the scraps hole. Finish turning of the FINIAL tip was slightly rounded so as to not later pierce the box owners hand if placed on the tip of the FINIAL by accident! Talk about attention to detail!

The four pieces were assembled (not glued as this was a demo) and here is what the (unfinished) end result looked like: Gary hopes to complete the TOP and send this unique box back to CMW.

--Bob Heltman

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