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There it is! Beautiful work! You must must be lying about it being your first segmented piece. ;-)
I'm slow, but I do poor work.
Posts: 21,259
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Location: IA
Even with the misalignments I think you did a wonderful job.
Now that you learned from some mistakes you know what to fix next time.
All I need is some lumber and courage.
Arlin
As of this time I am not teaching vets to turn. Also please do not send any items to me without prior notification. Thank You Everyone.
It is always the right time, to do the right thing.
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Location: southeastern VA
That is a most excellent first effort.
It is important to remember when you show it to non-turners that you were trying an artistic experiment to emphasis the natural patterns in nature where both order and chaos occur. Those are not mis-alignments; they are artistic elements.
That is our story and we all need to stick to it.
"the most important safety feature on any tool is the one between your ears." - Ken Vick
A wish for you all: May you keep buying green bananas.
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holy crap...an indian blanket patter for your first try is beyond ambitious. You really need to keep working on segmented stuff, I'm guessing you have a knack for it. I'm going to try and hit the points you brought up and a couple of others.
1) you said you ran out of wood and couldn't get the inside round. The length of a segment is always long point to long point. Increasing the length makes the ring a larger diameter but will not give you more wood on the inside, in fact it will give you less. To increase wood on the inside you need to increase the width. Segment length is determined by the vessel shape and needed ring diameter. Segment width is determined by vessel shape and desired wall thickness.
2) Segment alignment. Your right the glue lines should not line up from ring to ring, This might prove fatal to this piece down the road. On my first piece I lined up the glue line because it seemed like the easiest way to center the rings. About 2 years later the vertical glue joints all opened up.
3) I'm a bit of a loss on how you constructed the turning. The mismatch on the brown ring above the feature ring makes me think you did use a type of stave construction rather than rings?
4) I cant tell in the picture but the brown spacers in between the feature segments should have the grain direction running the same as the rest of the wood (no cross grain glue joints.)
5) The feature ring. Something to ALWAYS remember on EVERY feature ring. When you turn it round the patterns are going to get closer together. The fewer segments in the ring the closer they will get. I'm guessing that's why some of the pattern ran into the brown spacers. Their are a few tricks to minimize this.
1) account for it in the design. My feature rings are normally 8 or 12 segments. I always leave at least 1/2" between the edge of the pattern and cut edge of the segment. That means the patterns start out with a 1" space between them. That 1" decreases as I turn it.
2) try to minimize the use of spacers between patterned segments. This crates a picture frame effect and highlights any off centering of the featured segments far more than an open field will.
3)Before you cut the featured segments to length make sure both faces are sanded flat and parallel to each other.
Mark the centerline of the pattern. Divide the needed length by 2. Line the centerline mark up with the right measurement on your sled or miter saw. Cut all the segments on one end. Now use a stop block at the final segment length and cut the other ends. This way even if you are a little off the all the segments will be off the same way and less noticeable in the final piece.
Please forgive me if you already know this stuff or it seems harsh. I truly don't mean it that way. Segmenting has pretty steep learning curve. A lot of this stuff I had to learn the hard way over the years. I am very impressed with your turning and truth be told I have never attempted the indian blanket pattern. Keep up the good work and if I can be of any help please don't hesitate to ask.
