(upbeat strumming country music) - Hi, welcome to The American Woodshop.

I'm Scott Phillips, and today we're going to turn boxes on the wood lathe.

When you turn something that has a lid on it, that's called a box, and we'll do a multi species turning as well, with inlay on top of this one, so let's get to it.

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Woodcraft, helping you make wood work.

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- [Announcer] Woodcraft magazine, projects, plans, and web links, designed to help you make wood work.

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- Today's all about turning, and how easy it is.

And this is a chunk of mahogany, held by a four jaw chuck, that's what this is called right here, four jaws squeeze down on this flared, dovetail like foot, called a spigot.

And then the wood grain's running this way, and I've already cut in a shoulder here for the lid, and on top of the lid, look at that.

What in the world's going on there?

Let me set that down and show you.

I use thick viscosity cyanoacrylate adhesive, say that 10 times fast.

And then I sprinkled in mother of pearl inlay flakes, amazing stuff, and then on top of that, I put these tiny pieces of what is called marina, and you'll see why all of that is magic in just a second.

Now let that cure overnight until it's hard, and I turned this so that you could get hooked right away.

So this threats onto the drive spur of the wood lathe, and, this is so much fun.

You don't want this whole assembly to stick out more than about six inches, because it's going to be unsupported on this end by a live bolt bearing center.

So now I need to spin that around, and tighten the Allen set on there, so that stays nice and tight.

And the other thing I'm going to do is make sure that the jaws are tight on that foot.

And now we can get to turn.

Action they say, all right, here we go.

Now we're going to use this tiny little carbide cutter, round cutter, and I want the cutting edge of that to be right at or slightly below center line on this.

Now let's see if this is centered up when we turn it on.

No rings, no long jewelry, no long hair, sleeves up, face shield, very important.

So be sure to read, understand, and follow all the instructions that come with the tools and products you use, in your wood shop.

Let's dial that up a bit, shall we?

Okay, wood lathes, this is an amazing machine right here.

Now let's just round that over, just a little bit, with this cutter.

Key thing is this hand is designed to do one thing and that's keep this chisel flat to this tool rest right here.

As long as you do that you have it completely in control.

And I'm just barely kissing that glue with the inlay in there, and now I'm getting into the wood a bit.

And the reason you do this is to make it something more aesthetically pleasing.

Look at those ribbons coming off of there.

Let's take a look at this, I think we have it.

To where we can set it up with a dust shroud, let's take a look at that.

Sand that, buff it, and then put a finish on it.

And that makes it much more decorative.

We'll take that down a little bit more, then I'll put a dust port here, sand it, friction a little finish, and you'll see why this is worth doing.

[sanding] Now it's really important never to wrap cloth or sandpaper, anything that you friction on a pad with finish on it, this is high performance finish.

And you put your hand on top so that it does not over spray on your face shield.

And you learn that the hard way.

And anyways, let's take a look at what we have now.

Turn that off.

Let that friction just bring it up to a wonderful shine.

And look at that inlay.

It just sets it off, and that's exactly why you do inlay in turnings, to really make it shine, and whatever you do wearing that N95 mask when you sand, but I'm loving that.

And that's delicate, this is the top, this is the foot.

So now what I can do, move this dust shroud back so it's out of the way.

Bring up the tool rest, and, when I'm doing turning I don't need a dust mask because it's not fine dust, it's shavings and chips.

And what I'll do now is bring up what is called a diamond parting tool, and that's because the shank is diamond shaped, it comes to a diamond-like point.

And now I can part this lid from the base that we hollow once we get everything checked.

There's one other thing, I want to make sure this is tight.

And that's secure.

We don't want any vibration.

Those can loosen up, that's why you do that.

Now we'll make that parting cut.

I keep this chisel perpendicular to the tool rest, and snug it up to my body, and then I go in about 3/8ths of an inch.

Now I just make that a little bit wider because you don't want this getting into a bind, and I just know from experience, that I can take the speed up just a little bit more to get a better cut.

Now at higher speed this is, almost 1,500 RPM.

See how that cuts better?

But you definitely do not want to get this into a bind.

And you just keep walking this in until there's about a quarter of an inch left, I'll get that done.

When you turn it's all a matter of finesse.

You don't want to be forcing anything.

So what I can do now is just float that parting tool tip back and forth, as long as I keep this shank perpendicular to the tool rest, and I don't wanna crank it that way or that way, I wanna keep it straight in.

And because the grain is running the length of the work piece, that little stub in the middle right there is remarkably strong.

So I'll just keep taking that on down.

And I'm going to do an advanced technique here where I'm going to marry this chisel to my body, and as I take that all the way down now, I'm going to bring this hand up, gently, part this off.

You wanna take your time on this, this is not a foot race.

And voila, how about that?

Is that cool or what?

And I'll show you how to finish that off, but this lid now has a lid on, or a lip, that will lock into the bottom.

I'll get setup so that we can hollow this, there's a technique where we use dividers.

See each point on the divider?

On the diameter it just barely is inside touching that cork like lid.

That will angle into the hole that we're going to create, but how do you match the hole to the lid?

Well this is how you do it.

Swing the tool rest around so that it's adjusted on the center line, lock it in, and then with only this point touching, you keep this point back, it's only there to match up diameters, now watch what we do.

This again is to determine how to hollow this.

So you start inside with this point that's swinging down, and you hold that point down, and you keep walking it out until the point on this side matches.

Like so; again, this side is not touching.

And when you have that at the right spot, you stop, that's the diameter we need to create.

Turn that off, let that come to a stop.

Don't be moving that tool rest until that's safely stopped.

And now what I can do is move the banjo, that holds the tool rest, and bring up this Forstner bit, and I know from measurements that as long as I take it all the way in this will establish the bottom depth that we're going to turn this to.

Okay, I'm gonna dial the speed way down to about, I wanna say, we'll keep it around 400, right here, and now we can crank this in, the tail stop has to be locked for this to work, and again as long as I take this chuck, right even with the edge, that will establish the depth that we're going to hollow to.

This step guarantees you don't turn this into a funnel.

Okay that looks very good right there, and now let's see what we've got.

Very good.

Boy, that looks great right there.

Okay turn that off.

Take this drive spur out, or excuse me, the chuck, the Jacob chuck, and now we can go to hollow.

So I slide the headstock all the way back, adjust the banjo, bring up the tool rest.

And we can use a bowl gouge first.

And that's the go to.

And the key with the bowl gouge is to keep the cutting edge right at or slightly above center line, that's key.

Okay, that looks really good, let's make those cuts.

Now those jaws are tight, but, you have to establish a shoulder first, and once you have a shoulder you can rub that bevel, and you can hollow that right on down and open this up, and it goes pretty quick.

And just, I'm feeling my way along here.

It really pays to have sharp chisels.

And I'm going to open this up.

I can turn that speed up.

From experience, you can tell, a nice light cut like that, is all it takes.

I'm all the way to the bottom, I think you can see that.

But I'm drawing it out, and remember, that line right there is what I'm cutting to.

For a perfect fit for the lid.

I know from experience in this transitional curve in the bottom, that's the ideal cutter right there.

It's sanded and ready to roll, let me turn that on.

And before I put the finish on I'm using this negative rake, a special carbide cutter, diamond point, now watch what I do, you wanna be careful with this, gentle.

One, goes straight in, the walls are deep enough, right at half an inch, that I can go in, about 3/16ths, and there is, in the universe, a very special number, number three, so, I often put those three rings on, just, it adds a bit of mystery to it, and I love it.

That looks really good.

So I'll do just a spot more sanding then friction on some high performance, which is the water based finish, and we'll take a look at how all this comes together.

With mahogany you want to get the first seal coat on, we aren't through finishing yet, but it's buffed dry, and here's the lid, let's see the fit, looks good to me.

And here we go, we take this, Allen, and we release, expand the jaws, the four jaws, and you'll see the foot for the first time, and you can tell it looks a little rough, so the walls are thick enough that we can expand these jaws onto, the jaws, you want to be gentle with this, like so, you don't want to crack it.

But you always do push in as you tighten this down, and that looks good right there.

Love that shelf.

And here we go, we put the tool rest back up, set the lid out of the way, and adjust it so it's down about a half an inch.

Now watch when happens, we're going to use this diamond negative rake tool to smooth out this bottom, it's the little details, I have to complete the bottom, if you don't complete the bottom, your work is not done.

Now I have the speed dialed down to around 500.

So, easy does it, very light cuts.

With the carbide cutter, the diamond point, and you have to finish off the bottom, otherwise it's just not complete.

Because people are gonna pick this up, and the pro turners, the first thing they're gonna do is look at the bottom.

And then we're going to smooth out the side, using the light touch, because we don't want to push this out of the jaws, like that.

And then, we can come up here, and we can finish this off.

Just like that, a nice, light touch.

[dust collector whirring] Now, it's starting to come alive.

Let me turn this off.

And, it's still damp, but here's what we have to do next.

I get my key, and I take this off.

You'll be able to see how it's really starting to look beautiful.

Okay, so on a good box, the lid should fit like that, it should be tight, and you should hear that little click.

But the bottom, the inside of the lid now has to be fixed, 'cause the base is done.

So this jaw right here is too big to close down on the top of the lid.

So I have to put these smaller jaws on, and these four jaw chucks have a million different styles of jaw, so you can grip just about anything.

So I'll get this off and configured and you'll see how we can detail the bottom of the lid.

Now the smaller jaws are on the chuck, and I just have tape round the very top of this, and I press it flat and in, and close those jaws down at the same time, and it's really important that you don't crush that delicate top, with that inlay.

Okay, so pressing it in like that, the jaws are just about perfect right now, just a little bit tighter, that's good.

Turn on the dust collector, do a spot of sanding, a little bit of finish, and then we can marry the two pieces.

Off we go.

[sanding, dust collector whirring] Now the tape comes off.

And I'm going to put that together, get this finishing glove on.

I never like to get finishes on my hands.

And here we go.

I'll buff that down just a little bit more, but I want you to look at the grain, that nice little cathedral arch there, and the fit on the lid is just perfect.

Let's take a look at the bottom, because it has to be finished as well, and that is how you make a box on the wood lathe.

And there are a couple steps that we skipped so that we could get right to this, and one is how do you create the blank?

Well over to the bandsaw we go.

Now watch this.

Turn on the dust collection, get the bandsaw up to speed.

And I'm going to make a crosscut using the miter, okay.

Giving the blade plenty of time to carry away the sawdust.

And now, I can cut these to square lengths.

It's marked on there somewhere.

And I'm going to leave the line.

[saw whirring] And I don't go all the way through this jig, so that's how you cut the work pieces to length.

Now, whatever you do when you cut glue ups like this to length, make sure you turn off the saw, and let it come to a stop.

And then adjust this guard assembly down.

You close this gap for two reasons.

Number one it takes any flex out of the blade, you don't want bare blade up, number two, it guards the cut.

And how do you knock these corners off?

That's easy, just tilt the table, lock it at 45 degrees, put a fence up, and then make those cuts, and that makes this, basically, round, and a whole lot easier to turn.

You don't have to do that, but it's a good technique.

Now that's how you make the cuts for the blanks let's head over to the lathe, and do a quick little foot workshop.

When it comes to turning blanks, if you're going to do glue ups like this one, it takes time, the right water based, yellow, aliphatic resin wood glue, and also, lots of clamps, and you let it cure, and the wood has to be dry.

I have 14 different species of wood in this piece of scrap.

Now to turn it round, you can see I've put it in to the jaws of the chuck to grip it, I have the live bolt bearing center on this end, and the first thing I do is I use a half inch bowl, B-O-W-L gouge, to round it, and once it's rounded, the largest cylinder form, I divide the, what would be the bottom third, to make the lid, and the bottom two thirds is the base.

And then I can square off the end with the parting tool, and then I can use that special carbide diamond point cutter to create that dovetail shape for the foot.

All right, speeding ahead, so you get the whole story, watch this, okay, this comes off now, and you go what in the world am I looking at?

Well that is the finished lid, see that dovetail that we cut?

How it fit in the jaws?

And then I just hollowed that because it's nice and light in the hand, did the same thing for the base, because it's got that same dovetailed flare, and then everything fits together like a glove, and it all starts with that rough out.

This little piece gets parted off down the road.

But now you bring that over here, and you can see, that the world is your oyster, because look at that beautiful piece, that's turned.

And today marks Meghan Murray's sixth year with The American Woodshop.

I hear applause in the background, and this is for you Ms. Meghan, thank you for six years of excellence.

And then this one, is for Kaitlyn, God bless her.

She's camera two, but she's really the lady that gives us those wonderful closeups, so thank you both very, very much.

So that being said, now you know how to turn boxes, this one was made by Barry Todd, everyone knows him, from a Maple noggin that I gave him.

That's absolutely grand.

And whatever you do, sign your work, it is not an act of vanity, someone down the road will want to know who made it, put a date on it.

Well that's it for this week from The American Woodshop.

Now whatever you do, get to your woodshop and make beautiful things.

And please start to turn, you can't have more fun in the woodshop.

See you next week.

Oh, it's a cantilevered table that you won't want to miss, see you.

- [Announcer] Woodcraft, (classical orchestral music) since 1928, providing traditional and modern woodworking tools and supplies to generations of craftsmen.

Woodcraft, helping you make wood work.

(intense music) - [Announcer] Pro tools, for tool pros.

(intense music) Rikon Tools.

- [Announcer] Woodcraft magazine, projects, plans, and web links, designed to help you make wood work.

- [Announcer] PS Wood, home of Timber Wolf Swedish Silicon Steel bandsaw blades, and super sharp scroll saw blades.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] A bed to sleep on.

A table to share meals.

A house that feels like a home.

The Furniture Bank of Central Ohio, providing furniture to neighbors in need.

- For more information on tips behind The American Woodshop, and watch free episodes 24/7, check us out online, and like us on Facebook.

(upbeat strumming country music)