December was a fairly quiet month for woodturning. What with all the build up to Christmas and the buying presents and hanging decorations not to mention the eating of mince pies there just isn't time to do anything else. Even so I managed to knock out a few pieces. The first thing I had to do was finish off the egg cup that I was making. I was really proud of my egg cup even though it was probably the simplest thing that I had made to date. The shape was perfect. I sanded it to a top quality finish and burnished it then set about parting it off.

The piece of wood I was using meant I had maybe 2cm to part off in. I wanted a flat base so I decided to part off using just a parting tool. I often use a gouge to provide a slight undercut so that an item sits flat but I felt in this situation it would be fine to just make the base square. I parted right down and nipped off the remaining small stub using a skew. This left me with a small nib on the bottom of the piece. This nib needed to be removed so I tried removing it with a flat chisel - it didn't budge. I had been a little over cautious parting off and left the nib a little on the large side. I tried with a gouge (which I have found works well when there is an undercut) to no avail. At this point I was a little frustrated as it looked like I had a lovely piece that was going to be wrecked by a little nib of wood.

In my frustration I developed a case of stupidity. I thought that I could clamp the piece in the chuck and very gently remove the nib. I clamped it up with the minimum of pressure and applied the tool. The piece fell out the chuck as you might expect. I clipped the tool rest on the way out and fell down behind the lathe. When I pulled it out it was dented and scratched beyond recovery. While this sounds really dangerous in actual fact it was that bad. I kind of half expected it to fail so that lathe was going very slowly.

Always one to try and find the good in a situation I decided to finish the piece anyway. I need practice finishing pieces and this seemed like as good an opportunity to practice as any other. I needed to clean my dress shoes and while doing that I dawned on me that shoe polish is basically a wax and wood can be waxed. Two and two were quickly added together to make three and the damaged egg cup was getting a coat of black shoe polish. After a buffing up the result was surprisingly good. Sweet chestnut is very ring porous and the colouring gets trapped in the holes. I'm not sure what I would use the finish for but it's easy to apply and a bit different.

I still needed to make a couple of egg cups for presents so I set about making some more. I found out a nice bit of wood, turned it down, hollowed it, sanded it and parted it off. I then repeated the procedure to make a second cup. I was well chuffed with myself so I went and got an egg to test the fit. Whoops. Some how I had totally fluffed it and made both egg cups too big! Eggs did sit in the cup but they didn't touch around the top edge. I gave up at that point and decided to come back to it another day.

My next attempt at making egg cups was far ore successful. Despite a dig in during hollowing I made a couple of very respectable egg cups which were presented as presents on Christmas day. The recipient was very pleased and, ironically, feels that they are too good to actually be used so they may never actually see an egg again.

Other than the egg cups I did a little practice turning cutting beads and the like nothing very exciting. I did, however, get a few bits and pieces for the lathe for Christmas. I am now the proud owner of a chuck so I can get on with hollowing things. I also got a thinner parting tool which will be useful for those smaller jobs that I always seem to be doing. There was also a mixed bag of bowl blanks waiting for me. Having not turned a bowl this should provide some interesting stories.

The only problem I have with the bowl blanks is that I don't want to ruin a nice piece of wood practising on it. I suppose, however, I've got to get on and turn the blanks though or I won't ever learn to do it.