Crazy Monkey Woodshop

At least on my part. Ben finished up 2 winders and a double swift today (and they’re getting shipped today). I, on the other hand, only turned one spindle. To be fair, I did vacuum out the car and clean some of the mud out of it while Ben was working. Yesterday, we went to Collector’s Specialty Woods in Gardner, CO. Here’s some of what we got. (More after the jump).

Boards from Collectors Specialty Woods

Curly Sycamore and a Flame Walnut! Can you believe it?!  Ben found this piece of Curly Sycamore

Curly Sycamore Closeup

I walked into the room where they keep their HUGE slabs of burl and some of the offcuts along with some of the nice wood, and there was this beautiful walnut.

The board of Flame Walnut

We also picked up this lovely bocote with the light sapwood.

Bocote Board

And … a cardboard box?

Oooooh, a cardboard box. Wonder what's in it?

On the invoice, it’s a Box of Blocks. It’s a strange mixture of weird sized cuts and leftovers from other peoples’ orders. This box was rather interesting.

Contents of Box

There’s all sorts of interesting things in the box, including a chunk of teak and several offcuts from someone’s job, about a 3″ long piece of glued-up almost square random wood (of which we have several pieces), some square glue-ups, and a glue-up board which looks like maybe teak with a piece of spalted wood in the middle of it. The things that look like rocks in the picture are the real treasures, they’re pieces of burl.

An example of burl from the Box of Blocks

There’s also a piece of blue buckeye burl, which is actually BLUE. Like someone spilled a fountain pen in the tree.

Blue Buckeye Burl. Yes, it's blue wood!

What we actually drove to Gardner  for was a wee tiny bit of finish, as we were running low on the finish for the winders. You know, a wee tiny bit of finish that we drove for 4 or so hours to get.

Just a little bucket of finish

I’ve just finished a couple of drop spindles, and we’re taking them to Table Rock Llamas this morning. Here’s 7 of the 8 I’ve gotten done the last couple weeks.

7 of the 8 spindles I've turned recently

I turn the whorl (the round part), like most people. but I also turn the shaft. I turn both the top and the bottom, to make them pretty and comfortable to use.

The tops and bottoms of each spindle shaft have turned details

Off to storage for us, we’ve got to find the tags for the drop spindles and then we’re off to see the lovely ladies at TRL, then back home to sleep. My work schedule makes me awake at weird hours, as I’m working 7p-7a, and we try to keep more or less the same schedule on my 3 or 4 days off.