First turned miniatures

And so....

Taking one of my tiny chunks I glued it to a block of scrap pine and just decided to see what happened. A plant pot appeared from the block of wood followed my a slightly more curved one the day after.

Plant pots.  Push pin for scale.

The next day came another two minis from the same type of wood, a bowl and a deep platter which I don't have pictures of for some reason. [Correction. Making up for being a bad blogger I went and got them and photographed them.] The base of the bowl on the left is a little too thick but all good practise.

First Bowls

The next session at the lathe I used a piece of Yew wood which had cracked during drying and was no use for full size work. Broke it down and glued it up for this little pair of beauties, the wall thicknesses were getting thinner and I was very happy with these items. The little dish is just 6mm (1/4") tall.  I think yew may be my favourite wood, works easily, has a lovely warm colour and grain and finishes wonderfully.  We are lucky to have a tree surgeon amongst our group and I shall have to offer him baked good for more yew (and other woods)

Yew

Now we are almost up to date, I hit the lathe again this afternoon and after turning a spinning top (normal size) from yew as a warm up, I started with another bit of the same wood as above. Perhaps I was getting over confident and the first bowl I made was destroyed in a catch, there was still a little left so I went for another little dish like the one above but I was an idiot and made the same mistake and lost that too.

Next a piece of sapele, turned a small bowl, sanded and finished and just needs the bottom cleaning and finishing before I can photograph it but very nice. Still lots of wood left so I started a plate, which began to develop a base which turned into a cake stand, all was going well and it was just as I was finishing the polishing up that I held it wrong and it was destroyed, the top was super thin (in scale but fragile) and it would have been stunning. I was rather sad. Thin top platter with an simple but elegant pedestal in a warm brown wood.

Perhaps all of my walls today were too thin and overly fragile. That is the danger of mini work, walls less than 1mm thick and it is so easy to slip and destroy nearly an hour of work. At least I am not short of practice wood, G tells me there are more scraps to salvage in his workshop, his timber come from local joiners so they are somewhat limited in variety, hopefully when word gets around our club that I can use pieces that are firewood to them I may find myself inundated with a larger variety of woods (a terrible burden). For exotics I may have to resort to actually spending money and buying them. And hunting in the garden. We have a lot of garden.....seriously.

For anyone wondering, I am trying to get back to my blogging and the mini community in general so I would love to get set up for some swaps or personal exchanges. I would happily swap something I have made for something nice that someone else has made with love. I will get set up for better images as I do have a dslr and a macro lens, I just need to get somewhere set up with decent lighting. The next upgrade at the lathe station will be two lamps for excellent lighting and I am hoping to put together a little photostudioroombox which can sit (with magnets) on the lathe bed and borrow the twin lights for good photographs.

And maybe, in time..........an etsy shop?

And because blogs need pictures and the latter part of this blog is lacking, here is a cute kitty in a bag.

I couldn't bring myself to take the bag away.