Adding a twist to my turning ... ...

For some time now I've been getting, well I guess the word I'm looking for is bored, with the stuff I've been turning on my lathe, it's kind of become the norm, and I figured it was time I experimented a little more.

So I have been playing about with adding a slightly different type of design to my turned pieces, it's nothing special but it does seem to add an extra element of interest, well I think it does.


You may have seen the staff I've made for Halloween ? -

I did this quickly.

The twist design is easy to do, and although when it comes to turned wood you can buy special turning chisels, but they can be well over £150 in price, which to be honest is a little more than I want to spend, and besides doing that kind of design by hand adds a more personal touch to an item.

Here's a short video (not very clear) of me adding twist designs to a piece I made for the shop, it's a hardwood case, for storing large pins,needles or indeed things like hair pins.


Adding the twist with a small rasp file to start with (no sound) -

 

Adding the twist does take a bit of time, and you do have to be careful in order to get even spacing, but it does look good, I'm using a small rasp file to rough out the twist (spiral) and as you can see I've already done one spiral, which is basically a case of going over the roughed out lines with a larger rasp (if you want a wide twist that is) then use a normal file to smooth things out a bit, then it's good old sand paper in different grades to get a nice finish on it.


The rasp files I use -

Nothing special, bog standard rasp files.

 

The piece I'm working on in the video is mounted in a chuck on the lathe, which does make the whole process a lot easier to do, but you can do things by hand, it just takes a little more effort and time.


And if you're lucky it might turn out like this (or better, not that this is great) -

The finished article, which is for sale as it happens.

Another picture with a different view -

I've been experimenting with making it look more fluid.

Since I made the case in the pictures above I've been experimenting a bit, I've made two more case like the one above, but with different spiral designs, over all I'm quite pleased with them, so much so I plan to play about with it more to see what I can come up with, I've also made some wooden pendants by hand and also added a spiral design to them, again using the rasp files, but completely by hand.


Here's a couple of pictures of some of the pendants -

Eucalyptus.

Pear with a copper twist.

Again I'm pleased with how they came out, it's perhaps not as uniform as the cases, but I think that adds to the over all look of them.

I'm glad I tried this out, and it's simple to do, and doesn't require any special tools, well apart from a lathe, I am now starting to rough out the design of a large single candle stick that incorporates a large twisted section.

Thanks for reading.

'I reverted easily to my wild state, that is experimentation.' - Jack Steinberger