Thread: Pruned ash challenge

It started with an idea.
There's an upcoming event for French and Swiss wet shavers during which there will be something like a giveaway/give one take one thingy.

Why not turn a few handles, at least some of them could find a new home and I could hone my skills...

Then there was a first attempt, discussed above


And then it went "ok, it came from a branch I pruned 2 years ago from the ash at the back, let's turn the whole thing into handles".
Sadly, some sections had been riddled with holes by worms, so I was left with less than I hopped (eyeing the second pruned branch)

The process is, for now, mostly the same.
First I cut my section, and I put it between points on the lathe, get it down to a cylinder without major defects.
If I cut true enough on the head stock, my spear drive (the "fork" that digs into the wood to make it turn) is all the support I need for the next step.
Otherwise I make a little tenon on one side, and I put it into my chuck.

Then it's drilling with a Forstner bit into a drill chuck, to the size of the knot.

I turn the piece around and then I put the chuck into the hole. (phrasing !).
At that point only do I start to put in shape, as it guarantees I will have no axis deviation.

There is a very good video by Lewis around here from which I've learnt a lot, if you want more information.

But then on each new piece I add a little "extra exercise".

On the first one above, it was the soshugiban, which means burning the wood with a blow torch.

Then there is this one

Which was stressful as hell. And not my first try
Constraint : turning it, from start to finish, using only the skew chisel. Because I am a bad guy and I hate myself.
Also, admittedly, because one of the French brushmakers, a true pro this one unlike yours truly, told me that the skew was treated in some circles with the same snob attitude as are straight razors.



Off with n⁰ 3.

I failed the challenge this time (more on it if I ever achieve it, it's a fun one). But I love the result. He's cute. I'll call him Alvin.

On the last ones the knot is the high mountain white one I mentioned in another thread. 1"


Hey... I think bit by bit I'm actually getting somewhere !

I like the shape of the last one, more ergonomic IMO.

If the worm holes are small a bit of epoxy fills them up. Then turn and see if a little more is needed. It gives a natural look to wood leaving natural defects.
Good luck on your turning. It can be a lot of fun.

Originally Posted by Gasman

If the worm holes are small a bit of epoxy fills them up. Then turn and see if a little more is needed. It gives a natural look to wood leaving natural defects.
Good luck on your turning. It can be a lot of fun.

Especially black looks good on wood!

I like your work .

Here they are cutting down many if not most ash because of the emerald ash borer.

Yeah, I too like the last one. It has a classic look and that ash has a nice grain. Not sure if it's the same ash we have here or not but ours is hard and has lots of knots and swirls in the grain. Turning it shows some skill.

Ash is a lightweight on the lathe actually. If anything it's to easy to make a big dent in it with the tiniest mistake.

It's still a hardwood, very sturdy, but on a hardness scale it punches far below some other essences.
It's "Janka scale hardness" is around 1300, which makes it equivalent to white oak.
Hickory (that we don't have over here in Europe) is around 2000, boxwood close to 3000, as is gaboon ebony.

But it's sturdy wood, which can take a lot of beating while not being as heavy, which makes it perfect for handles (as a YouTuber jockingly says about his tools handles, "if it's not ash it's trash")

I have a blank made of Australian goldfield with burls... That one is a doozie. I tried (and failed sadly) to turn an ebony/Goldfield collage, and the tool would just hit the brakes as soon as it left the ebony and went to the goldfield.

Among the "worst" essences, there is snakewood. I have been told that a lot of woodworkers hate working it because of how hard it is (close to 4000 on the Janka scale)

Originally Posted by Gasman

If the worm holes are small a bit of epoxy fills them up. Then turn and see if a little more is needed. It gives a natural look to wood leaving natural defects.
Good luck on your turning. It can be a lot of fun.

I love it. And doing it just for the fun of it is even better.
No pressure, no timeline, just my piece of wood, my tools, and me goofing around getting better piece after piece.

Oh and I followed your advice and I went and watched a few of Tomasic videos ! They are really good indeed. The challenge I now failed twice was prompted by seeing him doing it effortlessly with a frigging skew.

So I grabbed a piece hole-y wood with the idea that epoxy would be today's challenge.
Turns out (pun not intended but I'll leave it here) the galleries didn't go deep.

A few accidents later I had a workable albeit smaller blank canvas. So I tried the previous challenge again, only to fail, again. It's ok, it's still far above my skills.

Alright... Let's see if I learnt a few lessons from the last leather accent...

I was so happy to see how easily I now cut the shapes... Only a few weeks back it was neither as clean nor sharp.

This time I prepared a template for my cut, and glued using the local equivalent of tite-bond.


And I reaaaally like it.

So much that I think that knot will go in a lookalike, with ebony for the wood and shagreen for the leather...

So, out of curiosity, I looked it up just to see if our ash trees are the same as you have there, it was a slow day......and it turns out we do have different species of ash than you. But not only did I find that out, I also found out that what my grandmother always called a white ash here is not only not a white ash (Fraxius americana) but not an ash at all. What she called white ash is actually a pignut hickory (Carya glabra) and actually a type of walnut.

But this is why I dislike common names because what is colloquially called a pignut hickory here is actually a mockernut hickory (Carya tomentosa). Add to the fact that people are just sloppy with common names the fact that Florida has a tremendous amount of different trees to confuse. In fact, it has more kinds of trees (338) than any other state in the US with only Texas coming close (320 ).

There actually are white ash here among other ash's. It's just not the tree I was taught as a child it was. The funny thing is I was a horticulture major in college but orn. hort. so we didn't learn as much about trees as other "branches" of horticulture.

At any rate, that is why what I have my whole life called ash was so hard: because it is actually a hickory.

At the intersection between learning about american trees and wood turning, there is a nice YouTube channel called "Justin the Trees"

https://youtube.com/shorts/YeXL_Kz3J...7scLL1omRpyNCG