I don’t usually make wooden fruit. In fact I have never made wooden fruit. But today I started work on some wooden pears made of pear wood as a commission for a client who brought me some from a tree that he felled in his garden. I have already made some bowls from it for him. The tricky bit with pears is shaping the ends, because that’s where the lathe centres grip the wood.
Most of the turned pears I see are not very like the fruit in shape. The shape of Conference pears is pointy. You can’t really call them ‘pear shaped’. But the tree was a Conference variety so I shall go for that.
I had a delivery of timber today, a stack of MDF sheets. I spent quite a lot of time trying to fit it into the workshop. It is a great mistake to store materials in the workspace. Someone said that there are four things that a workshop must contain – the tools, the materials, the project and the turner – and that no workshop ever has room for more than three of those. But the days when I had a choice are gone, there’s not enough room outside either.
The cheap PVA I mentioned a couple of days ago seems fine. It looks like normal PVA, though thinner. I can’t break apart the joints I made with it then – I laminated the boards face to face, so lots of glue area and not much strain on the joint. Not sure I would use it where strength is more critical.