Live-edge turnings

Cherry live-edge bowl, 3" tall, $60

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and I’ve been doing a lot of turning this summer. My work is on display and for sale at the Historic Arkansas Museum Store in Little Rock. If you haven’t visited the Arkansas Heritage exhibits, I highly recommend it. The historic buildings and displays are fun and educational to visit, and the museum store is filled with a variety of handmade gift items from Arkansas artists. Check the website at arkansasheritage.com for all they have to offer if you’re visiting downtown Little Rock.

Pecan vessel with bark, 8 5/8" tall, $75

Using bark as a feature of a turned piece is a popular technique. Called live-edge or natural-edged pieces, they’re a bit tricky to make without breaking off the bark. Some care should be taken when owning such a piece; the bark edge (especially on the bowls) is delicate and can be broken off. The good news is, even if the bark breaks, it leaves behind a smooth and interesting edge that is still aesthetically appealing. One of my wife’s favorite pieces is a natural-edge bowl without the bark (the hackberry natural edge bowl pictured on the bowls page).

Small oak vessel with bark, 3 1/4" tall, $45

The infamous maple

Happy New Year! I know it’s been a while since I posted. I’ve been busy making Christmas ornaments and gifts. I’ll try to post more often in the next few months.

A couple of years ago, a friend of one of my buddies in my woodturning club had to cut down a huge maple tree. He offered us the wood, and several of us jumped on it. That enormous tree yielded some of the nicest wood with the biggest variety of grain patterns I’ve ever worked with. I’ve made quite a few projects from it, and so have others in the club. It’s been made into bowls and boxes and platters and even chairs. Here are just a few of the projects I’ve turned from the “infamous” maple tree:

This is the largest vessel I’ve turned. It stands 12 1/4 inches tall, is 10 1/4 inches wide,and would look good filled with dried grass or cat tails. It is priced at $495.

This vessel is 5 1/4 inches tall and 6 inches wide. It is priced at $245.

This crotch-wood bowl is 7  inches across, 1 3/4 inches deep — a good size for candy, a dresser bowl, as a desk accessory or just a decorative piece. It sells for $70.

One of the smaller projects I made  from “the tree,” (the smallest would be a pair of earrings I made for my daughter), this Christmas ornament with a pecan top finial is approximately 4 inches tall, and sells for $50.

A 7 1/2 inch tall hollow form, this vessel sells for $175.

One of my favorite pieces, this vessel stands 10 1/2 inches tall. It has been sold.

Large fruit bowl, 11 inches wide. This one is sold.

Turkey call (slate over glass) and striker. $65 for set.

This is by no means everything I’ve made from what my turning buddies and I refer to as “the infamous maple.” I’ve turned pens, duck calls, jewelry, more ornaments and bowls and vessels. Browse through my pages and you’ll find several maple items, many of them from the same tree. Any time someone calls me and says they’re having to take down a tree — maple, cherry, Bradford pear, pecan, walnut, or just about any other kind of wood — I’m there. I never know how many different types of projects I’ll have as a result.

Using wood features

Part of the design of any turned wood piece is the wood, itself. The grain and patterns, sapwood (the light part of the wood) and heartwood (the darker part) are as important to the overall design as the shape and size of the piece. I don’t always know what features are going to “pop” when I cut into the wood, but I try to have a general idea.

My father-in-law recently had to cut down a cherry tree that was leaning precariously in his back yard. Needless to say, I was there to claim that wood as soon as it came down. The 6 3/4 inch wide, 4 1/2 inch tall hollow form vessel above was made from that tree. As you can see, I used the sapwood as a feature of the piece, giving it a two-toned appearance. I’m asking $135 for this piece.

This 8 inch tall vessel, also cherry – one of my favorite woods to turn – has the sapwood as a side feature. This vessel is also listed for $135 .

A couple of years ago, my niece requested a wooden bangle bracelet, and my daughters immediately asked for them, too. The bracelet above is oak, with a spalt feature at the front. The one below is cherry sapwood and heartwood. I sell bracelets for $20 each. My daughters like them in light and dark woods to wear with different outfits.

And, finally, the next photo is a little cherry vessel, only about 3 inches tall and 3 1/2 wide that I think shows some of the best of the design wood can bring to a piece. It has sapwood, heartwood and “flames” and the color gets richer and deeper as it ages. This piece isn’t for sale – my wife claimed it as soon as she saw it. As you browse my pages, notice the other features I’ve brought out in the pieces, such as spalts, “quilts,” crotch wood and knots.

Turning takes patience

People are sometimes surprised when they ask me how long it took me to turn a bowl and I answer, “Oh, about a year.” Now, obviously, it doesn’t take a full year to do the actual turning. But when working with wet, or fresh-cut wood, the wood tends to warp as it dries. Sometimes I like to turn something and deliberately let it change shape, just to see how it turns out. I’ve gotten some very interesting shapes, usually ovals, from wet-turned projects. But when turning bowls, usually I like them to be a more uniform, round shape. If the wood dries too quickly, it cracks. So there’s a process to drying the wood that requires time and patience in order to get a quality finished product.

The first step I take with a nice piece of wood is to rough-turn a shape. In the photo below, I’ve rough-turned a bowl out of a good piece of cherry. I then seal the wood with a product called Anchor Seal to keep it from drying too quickly and cracking.

After the bowl is sealed, I put it in a paper bag for a while. Air blowing over the wood would dry it too quickly, making it crack. By putting it in the bag, I can slow the drying process. After a few weeks, I take the rough-turned bowl out of the bag and set it aside in a cool, dry place for anywhere from six months to a year, depending on the size. Obviously, the bigger and thicker the wood, the longer it takes to dry. I have stacks of rough-turned bowls and vessels in many stages of drying, so that I always have a project ready to turn.

The bowl in this photo has been drying for over a year. As you can see, it has warped into a slightly oval shape as it dried, and I want it to be round. Some of the bowls I’m drying have warped significantly more than this one.

I’ve deliberately left the sides of the rough-turned bowl thick so I can turn it into a nice, round bowl. Now that it’s dry, it will keep the final shape.

This is a cherry bowl that went through the same process as the one above. It’s about six inches across and two inches deep, a good size for holding candy or nuts or setting on a desk or dresser for miscellaneous items. My wife and I use wooden bowls of various sizes all through our house. They last forever and require only an occasional coat of mineral oil to keep them healthy and gleaming. They can even be used for salad bowls; simply clean with a damp cloth (don’t put them in the dishwasher), and re-coat occasionally with oil. The price on a bowl of this size is $50 — a bargain for a functional piece that will hold up to years of use.

Time to start thinking Christmas …

It’s hard to imagine it’s that time again already. Summer is barely over, and already the stores are putting out their Christmas trees and getting into holiday sales mode. Maybe the cooler nights are putting me into that mood, too, because I’ve made quite a few Christmas ornaments lately. I’ve been turning a new style of ornament that I like — an oval center with contrasting top and bottom finials. They’re about 5 3/4 inches tall from top to bottom. I’ve experimented with several wood combinations, like pecan with rosewood, spanish cedar with walnut, and cherry with mahogany (pictured above). They’re time consuming to make, and no two look the same, which is what makes them special, I think. These are heirloom quality, handmade ornaments that will last a very long time if stored in a cool, dry place.

I guess other folks are starting to think about the holidays, too, since I’ve already sold quite a few. I’ve put photos of some of the most recent ones I’ve made on the ornaments page. If you’re interested, send me an email and I’d be happy to discuss with you.

Duck Calls

I spent years thinking I wasn’t interested in duck hunting. Getting up before dawn to wade through freezing water or sit in a damp, cold blind? Sounded crazy to me. Then my nephew talked me into going with him one morning. I was hooked almost before the sun came up. I bought all the “stuff” a duck hunter needs – warm clothes, waders, a gun, decoys. All that other stuff that catches more hunters than ducks. At first I was so bad at using a duck call that one of my friends asked me to put mine in my pocket. But I kept practicing until I got better.

Once I was fully addicted to duck hunting, I started itching to make my own calls. I studied a lot of styles and did a lot of research. After a few experiments, I came up with a style that looked good to me and fit comfortably in my hand. I call my line Wing Stalker Calls, each one made by hand and fitted with a brass ring.

Falling into the vortex …

I bought my first lathe nearly twenty years ago, almost by accident. It was one of several used tools I acquired when a small local woodworking shop was liquidated. The lathe, an older, Rockwell-Delta, sat almost untouched in a corner of my shop for a couple of years. I concentrated mainly on scroll saw work then, and I’ve got to admit I was a little intimidated by the thought of turning. I didn’t have many turning tools, and the ones I had were dull. Turning with dull tools is no fun, I quickly discovered.

Still, I always liked turned wood projects and I wanted to try it. I purchased a Tormek sharpener at a wood show in Little Rock a couple of years after I bought the lathe and after reading a lot of instructions and watching some videos, I went to work on my tools. The difference was amazing. Watching the long spirals of wood shavings curl away from those sharp steel tools was addicting. I had entered the woodturning “vortex.”

Pens

I started turning pens for my wife, romance writer Gina Wilkins, who loves pens and hand-turned wood items. She uses a slimline twist pen (pollyanna burl) in her checkbook, and enjoys writing with her collection of rollerball and fountain pens I’ve made for her in various exotic woods. My two daughters and my son also requested hand turned pen and pencil sets, and I’ve since made each of them several types of pens in various woods. My son-in-law enjoys writing with fountain pens, so I made him a Little Havana fountain pen of goncalo alves with rhodium (shiny silver). The pens have been a popular gift item and I’ve sold quite a few of them in a variety of woods – such as walnut, cherry, ebony, zebrawood, cocobolo, grenadillo, tulipwood and rosewood, just to name a few. Prices range from $40 and up for the slimlines ($70 and up for a pen and pencil set), depending on wood used, to $125 for rollerball and fountain pens in the most exotic woods. See my pens page for pictures of some of the pens I’ve made — each one-of-a-kind because of the natural variations in woods. They are available in titanium gold, black titanium and rhodium, with either threaded or smooth ends.

Welcome to John Wilkins Woodturning.

Welcome to my site. I’ve been working with wood since I was quite young, and I especially enjoy turning on my Oneway lathe. I plan to add posts with wood turning tips and pointers I’ve learned along the way, so I hope you’ll check back frequently for information or to see my latest work.

Feel free to browse my pages, where all the items you’ll see are for sale (unless they’re marked sold). For information about sizes and pricing, contact me by email. I also take custom orders. I’ll be expanding my pages within the next few days with more photos and details, so please visit again soon.