Jewellery with Andy Ogilvie and Paul Reeves
Thu 17^th October 2024 at MWCC Club Night 

 Jewellery is worn for several reasons. Whether personal or functional, it should be comfortable while avoiding being heavy or rough to wear!  A small item or groups of small items are consequently ideal, but in order to be distinctive when small, one needs to either select wood that is more striking than ordinary, or else a plain wood that can be made interesting by decorating with texture, coloured waxes or resins filling indents etc.
 Sometimes, off cuts from previous projects can be a good source but be wary of loose grain wood which will lack sturdiness and liable to break up when thinned.
 Below are some suggestions of what to keep an eye out for.

(click for close up view)

And below are some examples of jewellery turned on a lathe :

(most of below can be clicked for close up view)

Andy started the demonstration with Earrings, although he did mention that as there were so many videos on-line of turning a pendant with offset holes, he thought it better to show us other types.

   Stud Earrings
Andy's tips for working with small pieces were :
♦ Thin diameters tend to be over-flexible so it is best to work the pieces close to the headstock where they are well supported. Providing the piece/dowel is small enough to fit the hollow Morse Taper shaft through the headstock, you will be able to work the piece over the rails before parting off and sliding through a new length to start the next without wasting wood.
♦ It is easier to create tighter shapes with small sized tools.

 At home, Andy had used a set of Pen Jaws which gave more distance / leeway for knuckles not to be rapped whilst doing close work, whereas at the demo, he only had External Safety Jaws which gave problems of limiting the techniques available and also left slight witness marks from the jaws' tight hold of the previous work. The use of Pen Jaws (with their round insides) minimised these marks as well as reduced the chance of drawing blood!
 A good alternative chucking solution might have been a Collet Chuck.
 

 A spindle square blank of Boxwood had been turned to an approximate 12mm dowel.  Having mounted the dowel as suggested in his tip above, Andy used a Skew to trim the dowel side true before clean cutting across the protruding end.  He used the Skew edge to scrape off the corner of the end face to about 45º but left the end face with a 3mm/4mm flat circle. Using the Skew again, he scraped the 2 new corners he had just produced which left the dowel end approximately hemispherical.  He marked the piece about 9mm from the end to where the earring would eventually be parted off. He sanded the piece with some 240 grit abrasive while he still had a smooth shape to work because his next cuts (with a small 3-pointed tool) created a circular cove around the end and a further 4 similar depth coves about every 30º around the shape, which would make it impossible to obtain a smooth flat surface without spoiling the coves' edges.  He used the side of his 3-point tool for the last shape to the part off mark to suggest a continuation of the sphere shape. He parted off ensuring the base was at least 8mm diameter to accommodate the Stud Post after sanding the base flat to receive it.  It just remained to repeat the process and superglue the Stud Findings onto their bases.
NB : 'Findings' is the general term used for jewellery fixings.

   Necklace
This comprised of a string of Boxwood Beads (turned from the Stud Earring dowel above) interspersed with Zebrano Pegs - The beads were produced with a similar process as above but formed into solid spheres with an appropriate sized hole for the string to go through (1.5mm drill bit) drilled down the centre with Andy's Dremel before sanded, parted off and sanded again.
 The Pegs were made from a Zebrano spindle square blank turned to a dowel and fed through the headstock's Morse Taper shaft as above. Working with 50mm pieces extending from the jaws for each peg in turn, Andy used his small Skew to trim the sides true and the end face clean. Next was to consider his design for a shape he would need to repeat accurately several times; so for the first Peg, he marked the intended ends, the centre and the quarters and planned to use a Bead Forming Tool with its outer wing lined up with each quarter. He proceeded to shape the end face, the beads with his Beading Tool, the coves and the taper as shown in the photo and marked all the salient points on a 'tell-tale' card held up against the jaws behind the Peg as an aide memoire for the next ones.
 One drawback of using form tools and scrapers on the side grain of spindle work is the tendency for the wood to chip out on short sections as can be seen in the photo of the Zebrano peg. The crowns of beads are particularly vulnerable. This can be countered by making very light cuts with a high spindle speed. Of course choosing a wood with a tight grain is a good start. Should you find this a concern, using a small gouge and the tip of your skew should avoid the chip out but you then lose the repeatability of the bead forming tool.
 Andy locked the chuck from turning and used an Awl to make a indentation about 3mm in from the intended parting mark so that his hand held Dremel with its 1.5mm drill bit had a starting point to create a hole for the bead string avoiding the risk of sliding sideways or off-centre. The Peg was parted off and the dowel was drawn out another 50mm or so and the procedure repeated with the aid of his tell-tale.
 With the string holes all drilled, the pegs were carefully sanded, sealed with Sanding Sealer with a brush to get deep into the coves and once dried, treated to a microcrystalline wax finish.

To highlight other ideas, Andy had examples of Pendants & Bracelets (photos above) with contrasting wood combinations and a pine cone enveloped with resin and turned thin.
Referring back to September 2024's Appraisal Table, Andy commended Rhob Williams' home-made leather Jam Chuck (see left) which had a spigot to fit his C-jaws and was perfect for gripping thin pendants.

 Andy also suggested that 'findings' including Screw Eyes and Pinch Bails could be obtained by typing something like "Jewellery Findings" into your browser to generate plenty of options from the likes of eBay, Temu, Amazon etc although anything silver does tend to be expensive.

 Paul displayed a few examples of his own made jewellery including 3 Lollypop Hair Pins made of Rosewood stem with Oak hand piece plus Irish Bog Oak as dark pin head; some blanks for Silk Scarf Rings; Bangles (70mm minimum for getting over a lady's hand); a burr toggled Pendant (which he knows better as 'Greta's Badge of Office') and a Pink Ivory Ring.
He pointed out that any burrs within Jewellery must NOT have any sharp edges left on the piece but can be removed by filling in with wood dust and superglue to smooth them over.

(click for close up view)

   Silk Scarf Ring
The trouble with a silk scarf is that if you tie it in a knot, it quickly loosens and slips undone. However, if you thread one end/corner out of a small hole and back through another hole nearby, and thread the opposite end/corner out of that second hole and back through the first hole, the theory is that when one end tries to work loose it is dragged back by the opposite end which won't tighten any further.

 The important thing to remember when selecting your wood is that ends taken from a spindle square length will mean the flat face of your piece will be a thin slice of endgrain. That raises 2 problems : endgrain doesn't look as interesting and it will be very prone to splitting.  However, that is not the case if the flat face is along/side grain.  In other words, avoid Spindle squares/dowels; use Bowl squares/discs.

 Bowl Squares were bandsawed or gouge-turned into cylinders of 50mm to 60mm diameter. The blocks had been prepared with 12mm holes with at least 10mm clear between their adjacent edges. Paul had found that twist drills tended to rip the edges upwards so he used his sawtooth drill bit to produce clean even holes.
 When a silk scarf is of colourful or intricate design, one might prefer the ring to be plainer so as to not compete with the beauty of the silk.  Perhaps like the pale wood above, which has its outer rim decorated with an Elf and gold gilt cream to make it 'interesting'.  When the scarf is just a single colour, then a more striking wood might be appropriate.
Whichever is chosen, when the scarf is in position, it will cover up virtually all of the centre of the ring.

 This demonstration was with a block of Brown Oak. It had been pre-drilled with two 12mm holes so the first job was to smooth and shape the front face with a small ¼" Spindle Gouge. Because of having to cut with those holes coaxing a gouge tip to drop in and cut the oncoming hole's edge, it is important to avoid having a heavy push of the gouge onto the wood but instead have a firm hand controlling the gouge on the toolrest with just a gentle pressure onto the wood while moving towards the left. This control is helped with increased lathe speed. Paul planned to smooth the centre and to take more wood out towards the edge while leaving a raised rim edge.  This was achieved by starting off with the gouge cutting with its tip and left wing at the centre of the piece but finishing by rolling the gouge so that only the central tip was cutting at the moment it reached the edge of the rim. This required a lot of hand movement; the gouge tip might have moved 1cm while the handle had moved 4cm while tip and handle both had to keep moving in the same direction. The right hand has to catch up the left by moving in a longer arc.
One could also use a Skew/Scraper in the same fashion as Andy had done with his pegs above.

 With the lathe speed slowed and the toolrest moved out of the way, Paul set about sanding a ring with 2 holes. With the lathe turning, one must not hold abrasive with an edge facing upwards into a down coming hole.  So if the lathe is turning, hold the abrasive in your fingers so that it hangs on the same side as the rotation direction. If you didn't, the loose abrasive edge would snag in the holes.  Bear in mind if you reverse lathe direction or you choose to sand from the other side of the rails, you will need to reconfigure the abrasive in your hand.
Ideally, doing your tool work well reduces the time needed for sanding with your lathe turning. Paul finished off sanding with the lathe stopped and used 240 grit to gently round off the edges of the holes to ensure the silk wouldn't snag on any roughness.

 Finally, a thought had to be given as to how thick does one part off.  Too thin risks the ring snapping in half; too thick risks its own weight will overcome the friction of the two silk corners going through the holes and fall off.  Paul used a thin Parting Tool, which seemed contrary to select when it's designed purpose is to cut across single grain direction of spindle wood. However, provided the tip is very sharp, this tool does a good job of getting a smooth and flat back face with little further sanding.
 With Brown Oak being quite tight grained and dense, Paul parted so that the ring thickness was about 5mm.  He made the cut wider than the width of the tool so that the final parting cut was away from the back face in order to avoid any grain pull-out in the piece.

   Pendants
Although Andy had highlighted a purpose built jig/Jam Chuck for pendants above, Paul thought it likely that few of us wanted to resort to that amount of preparation for producing just one piece.  A quick and easy alternative is a Sticky Chuck made from a bit of waste wood that we all loathe to throw away.  Paul had brought a bit of his waste timber, which was an off cut of endgrain Sycamore with a convenient spigot that fitted the current jaws.
 After ensuring the fitted timber ran true, he trimmed off the end face perfectly flat by checking against the edge of a ruler and using a few strokes of the lower wing of his gouge to finish. This now became the perfectly square chuck; the 'sticky' part was obtained by double sided tape, which works better than hot gluing because tape is a constant thickness.
 A couple of strips would be enough to secure small pieces of 'interesting' wood and despite that it will inevitably not be central, all can be easily sorted later on the lathe.

 Paul had started to turn a slight dome shape to the face of some Burr Yew when he noticed a couple of worm holes near the edge. The simple solution was to use a pencil held on the toolrest to draw a circle to signify the new smaller diameter that excluded the fault and continued the dome shaping to this pencil mark. He then decorated with a point tool to create more shape before tackling the rear face.
 When satisfied with the front, Paul prised off the piece and prepared the waste wood 'chuck' to stick to the new dome shaped front surface of the pendant. The previous perfectly flat chuck surface (with its remnant double sided tape) needed to be turned concave. In creating the dish shape, the used sticky tape is turned away. Paul continued trimming and checking with the pendant's front face to check he had the right shape.  In tonight's case, the waste wood had been initially used with a Screw Chuck so the central hole prevented the pendant from rocking about its highest point.  Another couple of double sided tape strips were applied for the stickiness (although some waste woods might benefit from being treated with Sanding Sealer to stabilize sticking to the 'chuck').

 The bottom line with this example is that most people hold their blanks too firmly which is unnecessary so long as you are careful with your tooling. For example, if working on the back face without checking the pendant is steady in its setting, a heavy hand on your gouge could press one side in, which might flick the other side away from the sticky tape and spoil the whole cut. Once it was cut gently & smoothly, Paul chose to decorate the back with a couple of concentric circles, just because he could.
 When it came to sanding, Paul had carefully tooled some detail on both sides and aware that those crisp edges would be quickly removed by abrasives, he opted to carefully tidy the surfaces with 320 grit and finish with a bit of wax and a Pinch Bail Findings to connect to its cord.

(photos by Andy Ogilvie, Rick Patrick & Paul Reeves)
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