Introduction:
When I decided to turn wood for a living late in 1969, I knew
nothing about the craft. But I did have it in mind to make boxes --
especially little boxes -- for rings, pills, and spices, or for the
more personal treasures we each possess. I had no inkling then of
how challenging this would be, or of the many thousands of boxes I
was destined to make throughout the decades following. Even now,
after 30 years, my fascination with this particular aspect of
woodturning continues. Much of this has to do with the challenge of
making a lid that fits just tightly enough that it comes off with a
soft plop. Then there are the visual aspects concerned with
proportions, the combining of curves and detailing, which in turn
must relate to the tactile qualities experienced when the box is
handled.
But above all, the attraction of boxes seems to lie in their
enigmatic role as mini storehouses that might contain anything from
a collection of tiny shells or ball bearings to a lover's eyelash or
mummified frog. Most of us feel the need to hoard mementos of times
past, which the casually curious might only guess at, and how better
to do that than in a group of boxes on some shelf, clutched together
as a sculptural form in their own right.
You can make special containers for specific objects or with
hidden compartments. These boxes might not be commercially viable,
but they are just the thing for any hobbyist--ideal personal gifts
that also stand a good chance of becoming the heirlooms future
generations will treasure. Boxes can be all manner of shapes and
sizes and it is not mandatory that the internal form should reflect
the exterior; box walls do not have to be thin and even. Thus there
is scope for all manner of design solutions to surprise or taunt our
expectations of how a piece should look or feel.
I have included a few technical hints to hone your skills, but I
don't dwell on basic techniques since these are set down in detail
in Turning Wood with Richard Raffan (The Taunton Press,
2001). Chapter 4 details how to turn a basic lidded end-grain box
with an over-fitting lid. Most of the boxes in this book have lids
that fit in the same manner: The inside and outside forms vary. If
you are new to box turning, make a few simple forms using this
chapter as a guide and strive for a nice, soft suction fit before
you move on to more complicated pieces.
You can find inspiration for new forms just about everywhere, in
seed pods and blossoms, finials on housing or many older public
buildings in so many parts of the world, or old-style mailboxes and
bollards. The Taj Mahal and the equally famous roofs of the Kremlin
led me to explore similar forms for several years before a ceramic
Japanese tea jar sent me off in another direction.
There are dozens of forms to set you on your own path of
discovery and to help the development of your own style. Rather than
copy them, let these be a springboard for your imagination,
triggering some variation of your own.
Like most of the world, I use metric scales to measure. For those
who don't, imperial measurements have been rounded to the nearest
1/8 in. for the sake of convenience. Accurate measuring in the
projects is mostly achieved without rulers or tape measures, and I
don't think the world will fall apart at my failure to measure to
the nearest 1/132 in. the diameter of any piece illustrated.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Equipment & Tools
Lathe
Chucks
Saws
Turning Tools
Skew Chisels
Ancillary Tools
Dust Collection and Safety
Wood Selection & Preparation
Types of Wood
Sourcing Wood
Cutting Wood for Blanks
Air-Drying Blanks
Rough-Turning
Preparing Blanks
Design
Exploring Form
Practical Considerations
Aesthetics and Proportions
Profiles
Finials and Knobs
The Inside
The Bottom
Making an End-Grain Box
More About Lids
Suction-Fit Lids
Screw-On Lids
The Join
Inside the Lid
Deep Hollowing
Boring End Grain by Hand
Drilling End Grain
Sanding the Inside of a Deep Hollow
Surface Decoration
Turned Decoration
Chatter Work
Off-Center Patterns
Inserts
Texture
Carving
Burning
Variations on the Basic Box
Retaining the Bark
Saturn Boxes
Sculptured Profiles
Roll-Around Forms
Miniatures
Drill Containers
Earring Containers
Needle Cases
Experiments
Forms
Finishing
Afterword
Index
Soft-cover, 8-1/2 x 10-7/8 in., 160 pages, with
color photos and drawings
Published 2001
Book ISBN: 978-1-56158-509-0
Turning Boxes
with Richard Raffan
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