Thing on a stick

[Allan Ferguson]

Queen's Land Maple and Mahogany. Approx. 8" tall x 3 3/4". Finished with Olive oil, Bee's wax and Carnuba wax. The first of this sort of turning for me. A bit heavy in places and certainly lacks the refinement of D. D. and other's works that I admire.

[Rich Aldrich]

Nice work, especially for your first of this type. I guess I am one that doesnt mind a little extra meat.

[Doug W Swanson]

Nice work. It's an excellent job for the first one!

[John Keeton]

Allan, actually your thing looks quite nice!! The "refinement" - aka delicateness - will come with time, but the overall proportions look good. I do have a question - what is Queen's Land maple??

[Dan Forman]

Alan --- I'm guessing it looks more like this in real life...

217841 217842

Excellent start for a first hollow form, pleasing shapes on the finial and pedestal and nice curves on the main body. Your picture is way underexposed, probably due to the relatively small form against a white background, the auto exposure setting an the camera turns it into a mid gray, creating the rather dark picture. Check your manual and see if you can add some exposure compensation, or use your editing software to alter the exposure after the fact. In Photoshop Elements, it's done in "image enhance" > "adjust lighting". Another thing you can do to improve photos is to use consistent lighting. From the color cast on the white background, looks like you use one fluorescent bulb and one incandescent, as there is both a blue and a yellow cast to the background, and same color highlights on the form. This makes it difficult to correct in camera or in Photoshop. If you use just one or the other, you ought to be able to adjust the white balance in the camera to take care of the color shift resulting from either form of lighting.

Dan

[Allan Ferguson]

John, I believe it is an Aussie wood. Grain very similar to Mahogany but light in color and a little harder.
Dan, on my computer it looked over exposed, so adjusted . So much for my adjustment. Yours looks good.

[Roger Chandler]

Good stuff Allan............very nice hf, and your skill will develop as you do more of these..............nice!

[Bernie Weishapl]

Good piece for your first. Finial and pedestal refinements will come with time and practice. Overall I like the form.

[David DeCristoforo]

Repeat: Great 1st attempt! These forms are tough to "get right". The "thinner is better" line of thinking is not necessarily the best. Neal Addy does forms like this very nicely and his pedestals always have a bit more "bulk" that we usually try for. But his proportions are spot on and that, I think is more important that how thin you can turn wood.

[Allan Ferguson]

Thanks all for the comments. Not the first HF but is the first on pedestal. The shape for the finial and base were tough to get anywhere near right.