Plywood can be beautiful, too.

These pieces were made by layering multiple sheets of plywood and then turning them down on the lathe. I will be making more of these. I really dig the final layered composition. 

The Woodshop

So my Christmas gift to myself this past year was to rebuild the woodshop to a more manageable configuration. Replacing one of my work benches with a four-wheeled mobile bench was the corner stone of this operation, a lot of re-org went down as well. I took this picture in between projects, so this is the cleanest it will probably ever be. 

The Christmas Hiatus

So it's bee a while since I last posted. There's a couple of reasons. First is that I couldn't share what I was working on because all of the pieces were gifts. After Christmas I elected to rebuild the shop, which shouldn’t have impeded me from posting, but did. And then there was the day job. When the day job also becomes the night job, shop schedule suffers.

But now I'm back and here's the christmas goods:

First up is the Oak Old Style Baton
The recipient has been with the county police department for going on forever, so I designed this baton based on nightsticks from around turn-of-the-century America and Europe. It's roughly 24 inches long, oak, and finished in Dutch oil and Shellac.

 

Cherry Baby Rattle

I'm blessed to know two lovely ladies who were both with child this holiday season, and these Cherry Baby Rattles seemed like a great gift idea. 

Mahogany Gavel and Sound Block

If any of you are familiar with gavels you'll know that this one is incredibly out of proportion, which is part of the design. Gifted to a lawyer friend, whose father was a judge, and is also going to be a father soon, I thought that this set would help him settle some arguments around the house...

Ornaments

Ornaments are great practice and also give me opportunity to try out different finishes. Here's a couple I  made for the family, in Mahogany and Oak.

Penguins

Lastly, sometime in mid November I had latched onto the idea that I should make a corporate gift for the agency where I work. So I returned to a piece I had done before, but in greater number…