Stairway to My Heaven

While I was in St. Paul Minnesota last weekend attending the 25th Annual Symposium of the American Association of Woodturners (AAW), the stairway was built to the second floor of my barn.


Even though I moved into the building in May, 2009, it wasn't completely finished; the barn is still a work in progress. But with the help of fellow woodturner and ART member, Mike Green, over Saturday and Sunday, Dave and Mike got THIS project done. And while they were building the stairs, Mike's wife, Sharon kept them well fed, and was the perfect surrogate Mom to my dogs, Eddie and Max.

The deck at the top is 6 ft. by 6 ft. The two side rails are temporary and will be replaced by three drop-in rails, that can be easily removed for hauling oversized pieces straight up and through the doorway.


The entire second floor is for wood storage, and all the noisy equipment. With the exception of the air compressor and sand blasting booth, everything currently up here was carried up a 12 ft. ladder that was leaning against the bottom of the doorway. The small bowls and billetts were carried in an old rucksack over my shoulder. Larger pieces and stickered boards were lifted up by me, to my husband, who pulled them in the rest of the way.







That's Eddie, an English Pointer and one of my shop mates, in the middle of this photo.

Having the stairs will make it soooo much easier to store my blanks and billetts. Looks like Dave will need to build more shelving space very soon!




See all these posts that are flat on top? That's for my contribution. I need to turn finial caps for each of these posts. Hey, I can do that! I'm a woodturner!

Spoon Commission

I attended my first national woodturning symposium of the American Association of Woodturners (AAW) last month, held in Hartford, CT. There I met wooden spoon collector, Norman Stevens, who had a small portion of his vast collection on display. Cheeky me, I introduced myself, sharing that, while I spend most of my time as a woodturner, I have discovered and appreciate the satisfaction of using simple hand tools to carve spoons.

We exchanged business cards, and about 10 days later, I received a request to carve him a spoon. I suggested the spoon be carved from the maple tree harvested at the Robert Frost Farm, in Derry, NH. This tree is said to be the inspiration for many of Frost's poems, including "Tree At My Window". I was there for the harvesting in 2007, documenting the entire day with photographs. Mr. Stevens was thrilled with the proposal, since he is originally from Nashua, NH.






I started working on the Frost Maple spoon today. But before I touched that valuable wood, I first carved a prototype from a lilac branch, which appears in the upper left corner of the photo. I often make prototypes which help me work out design ideas, form and proportions. And for this project, I'm carving two identical spoons. There's simply too much riding on this commission to risk making a mistake, especially near the very end.



I'll document this project, too, and post my progress on this Blog. I think it's fitting, that the tool I'm using in the bottom photo, with the curved blade, was hand-made by Del Stubbs, a former woodturner. I'm using this tool to carve out the concave scoop portion.