Today I finished the last job on the redwood globe stands. At least, I hope it is the last. The stands still need polishing and assembly of course, but I don’t have to do that.
The stands each have a big mahogany disc resting on heavy stretchers connecting the four legs. In the middle of each disc will rest the pedestal that I made a few days ago, and between the pedestal and each leg is a decorative button. It is these buttons that I made today.
I had saved some small offcuts of the figured redwood from the leg blanks. I cut some 80 mm discs with the bandsaw, then held them in the stepped engineer’s jaws of my old Axminster chuck. I faced off one side, turned a recess for the small dovetail jaws of another chuck, and made a small V at the centre. Rather than finish the job on my spindle lathe, I wanted to stay on the Graduate for better access, so simply held the small chuck in the bigger one. This increased the overhang, and would not do for all jobs, but these pieces were small. I quickly turned the discs to finished thickness with a bowl gouge and formed a shallow dome on the upper surface.
After sanding, I used the drill press to make a blind hole in the lower side. The button can now be glued to the mahogany disc with a short locating dowel. The figured wood should look great when sealed and waxed.
This whole job has been a lot of work, cutting and gluing up some large blanks and turning big components at the maximum capacity of my lathes. There has been little room for error, as there was only just enough wood. Any extra would have been hard to source, and very costly. I’m looking forward to seeing the finished stands with their globes installed before they are exported to the client.