While at the D & M Tool Show I picked up the December edition of Woodturning which contained a nice little intermediate level project to make a Christmas decoration. I was fairly confident that could make something similar the only difficultly being the hollowing step which called for a Forstner bit or some other means of removing the waste. I currently have neither a Jacobs chuck nor small scrapers and therefore needed to resort to using a spindle gouge to remove the waste. I have used a spindle gouge to hollow before but not to anything like the depth that was required for this project. On a 40mm piece of stock I have hollowed to a depth of roughly 2 to 3 cm but after that depth I start to get plenty of dig-ins. I'm not quite sure why I get dig-ins but I have my suspicions.

As I go deeper I need to drop the tool rest a little so that I can keep the gouge above the centre line. If I then try and hollow near the rim the tool drops below the centre line and I get a dig-in. I also get dig-ins when I am hollowing deep within the piece which I attribute to the fact that the tool is over hanging the tool rest quite by several centimetres. When there is substantial overhang even a slight catch turns into a big dig-in.

Anyway, on with the making of a Christmas decoration. I mounted a length of fairly knot free pine - yes I know, I'll never learn - and turned it to a cylinder. As this was just a "ee if I could do it" project I divided the length into three by eye and cut spigots on both ends. I then parted between the lid and base sawing through the last little bit with the lathe stationary. I chucked the base and hollowed out the inside as parallel as I could to the outside. I then took some light cuts on the outside to make the walls thinner and square them up. I started turning down the base intending to follow the magazine but changed my mind and decided to make a decoration that stood on a base.

I turned a base that I wasn't very happy with and parted off the bottom half of the piece. I then mounted the top in the chuck and cut a small rebate for the lid. One of the reasons I decided to go for a standing rather than hanging piece was because I haven't had much luck with making a tight fitting top. I've tried jam chucking before and ended up with two pieces broken going on the chuck and two broken coming off, or should I say flying off, the chuck. As luck would have it, however, I got it spot on right this time.

I parted down the rebate for the lid brought the base up to it and noticed it was very slightly too tight. I restarted the lathe and took a piece of 120 grit to the rebate. After a few second I decided to try the base again. It was a perfect fit. The base was a tight push onto the top and a perfect jam chuck. I immediately regretted deciding to make it a stand up piece rather than a hanging piece but took the opportunity to tidy up the base of the foot anyway.

As the base was well attached to the top I brought the size of the top down to match the base then turned the lid. All was going well until the very end when I was left with just the point of the finial attached to the waste wood. I decided to part off the lid, reverse chuck it and then tidy up the point. I mounted the lid in the chuck taking great care not to dent the lid and started tidying up the point. It was at this point I put down my common sense. For some unknown reason I decided to cut uphill which produced a dig-in that dented the lid in about four places and nearly broke the delicate little bead off the top. With much work I was able to turn out the dents and tidy up the bead. Even so, it wasn't quite as good as it was before I let go of my common sense.

I pierced the piece around the middle with a 2.5mm bit. I again made a slight mistake when I drilled two holes too close together. At the end of the day this was only a trial piece to see how well I could do. I'm fairly happy with the results as I know I could do a lot better if I tried again.

I followed the Christmas decoration up with making two egg cups for a relative. I have had this project sitting at the back of my mind for a while now but I wanted to make sure I was going to make something I could be proud of before I started it. I turned down a piece of Sweet Chestnut branch wood to a cylinder and looked at it - it was a nice piece of wood. It was about fourteen centimetres long not including a spigot cut in each end. Measuring it up against a couple of egg cups we have showed me that was just about enough for to make two egg cups (I still don't have a narrow parting tool so am wasting quite a lot of wood when I part off).

I sawed the round in two and mounted one piece in the chuck. I gauged the size I would need from one of our existing egg cups and sized in the blank in two places before reducing the whole length to size with the skew. Grabbing my trusty 10mm spindle gouge I proceeded to hollow out the top for the egg to sit in leaving a wall thickness of about 4mm around the rim. I squared off the top with the parting tool and then set the length, again with the parting tool. I had intended to take away all the waste wood to leave a traditional egg cup shape but on looking at the cylinder I immediately fell in love with it's simplicity. The sharp edges counter the smooth curves to leave a fantastic looking piece. Hazel loved it as well but wasn't sure it would fit with my uncles other decoration. I took some advice (phoned my mum) and decided to go with the simple design. The piece of wood has used has a lovely grain which should add enough visual interest to the piece on it's own.