• African Blackwood box-2


    This African Blackwood box is 5.5cm tall and 5.5cm in diameter. It was turned on my normal lathe and then enhanced on my Rose Engine lathe. To enhance it a bit more I added a white paste stone to the centre of the lid and a smaller pale blue one one to the inside of the lid. I entered this into the woodturning section of the recent Heckington Show where it was awarded second place.

  • African Blackwood box

    This small African Blackwood box is 5.5cm tall and 5.5cm in diameter. It was turned on my normal lathe and then enhanced on my Rose Engine lathe. To enhance it a bit more I added a red paste stone to the centre of the lid and a smaller one to the inside of the lid. To turn the basket wave on the outside I had to modify my usual cutter as it would have hit the chuck before it completed the pattern on the side of the lid so that cutter was modified on my metal lathe.

  • Small ornamental box

    This little box is 60mm in diameter and 60mm tall. The bottom is a piece of Olive wood that has been ornamental turned to a basket pattern with a 16 bump rubber on my Rose Engine using a router cutter and drilling frame. The lid is a piece of Blackwood embellished with an 18 bump rubber and the UCF on my Rose Engine lathe. The finial is separately turned again in Blackwood. It is finished with satin lacquer and then waxed with micro-crystalline wax.

    Small Olive and Blackwood box
  • Spalted Beech ornamental dish

    This shallow dish is 13cm in diameter and made from a piece of spalted Beech. Turned round and the back was turned on a conventional lathe. I then cut the outside using a 16 bump rosette on my Rose Engine and my new cutting frame. The cutting frame was then re positioned and the same rosette was used to cut the interior, going progressively deeper towards the centre to form the dish. The spalting seems to hide the ornamentation inside the dish so I may try gilding it with artificial gold leaf to see if it shows any better.

    Spalted Beech dish
  • Zebrano Clock

    This is a 12cm in diameter clock in Zebrano with Ebony dowels to mark the quarters. Claimed by my wife.

    Zebrano clock
  • Small ornamental box

    A small box 65mm tall with a 65mm finial and 50mm in diameter. A piece of Olive for the body which was mainly sapwood with a very small central core of heartwood with an Ebony finial. The Olive was nice and hard and took the basket weave well using a 16 bump rosette on my ornamental lathe. Finished in satin lacquer for the box and friction polish for the finial.
  • Ornamental box

    This box was turned from a piece of unknown very hard wood in the centre with a base and top of Padauk. It stands 14cm tall and is 7.5cm in diameter and is finished in lacquer. The basket weave pattern on the outside was cut using a 4mm cutter on my ornamental lathe. The Inside of the lid, the inside and outside bottom of the box are enhanced with ornamental patterns. This box has been claimed by my wife for her collection of my turnings.

  • Capsule box

    This capsule box stands 6cm tall and is 7.5cm in diameter. It is made from an unknown wood that was very hard with the remnants of a knot in the top edge. The lip to retain the lid is made from Bubinga. It has some ornamental engraving on the lid, the outer pattern of which was cut with a ‘spirograph’ type of rubber and the inner with a 16 bump rubber. It has a flower engraved on the bottom made with an 18 bump rubber. It is finished in lacquer and then buffed and waxed.

  • Square spalted sycamore bowl

    This is a piece of spalted Sycamore that I was given by a friend. The spalting was so different on each of the sides that I decided to do this shape of bowl which I haven’t made in the past. It measures 19cm square an 9cm deep and is finished with lacquer that was then buffed.

  • Modifications to the Rose Engine

    I have finally got around to doing some of the updates to the Rose Engine lathe that I mentioned in the original article here. I have added the new much beefier cross slide and mounted a CNC motor on it to do the engraving.

    I have had to extend the base due to the increase in size of the cross slide. I had an issue with the CNC motor when I connected it.  As long as the speed of the motor was below about 50% everything was fine. However, if I increased the cutter speed then the stepper motor would stall. After some help and advice from the forum on the DroneBot website the problem was eventually tracked down to the code on the Arduino, the original code from that site needed an additional line of code due to the fact that it had the ability to reverse the stepper motor direction. With this code modification everything worked properly. As I do not need the ability to reverse the direction of the stepper motor I then revised the code and removed that functionality and have disconnected the reverse switch and its wiring.

    In use with the new CNC motor and cross slide.

    The next modifications I intend to make are to completely rebuild the MDF case to reflect the new configuration and to finally replace the power supply with a dedicated 12v one rather than the modified computer PSU.