Difficulty making lids.

[Bill Jobe]

Can someone direct me to a good thread, or better yet, a video, on how to turn lids. I have yet to succeed in making one that fits right.
Right now I'm trying to make a lid for a globe-shaped bowl made of Osage Orange and it's not going well. I turned the rim to about 45* and want the lid to sit flat and snug on that surface making a perfectly round bowl and lid. The lid, of course, will need a knob, but I can glue something there.

[Reed Gray]

Well, grain has to line up. You bet better results with end grain wood rather than side grain due to how the wood moves after you are done turning. Tenon and recess should be pretty much exactly parallel, and do under cut the rims a tiny bit. If you are trying to fit a lid onto a bowl (bowl/side grain orientation) then you can't use a tight fit because of wood movement, and anything over about 1 1/2 inch diameter can move to the point where the lid will fit one day and not the next. Hope this makes some sense.

robo hippy

[Doug Rasmussen]

I don't remember getting a definitive answer to my question about using a rigid inserts, like metal, on the main body and on the lid to prevent distortion issues with wood movement. The possible problem (?), maybe. is what happens when you constrain wood from natural movement with season humidity variations.

I know one of the turning vendors sells pre-threaded metal glue-in inserts for threaded lid boxes. If constraining wood movement is a real problem you'd think these inserts are not a good idea..


Here's a little aside about wood expansion and movement.....years ago I was commissioned to build an expensive dining room table for a wealthy lady. Very friendly lady who kept asking if my shop was heated. I assumed her concerns were because it was relatively cold that winter. I assured her it was comfortably heated and not to worry about me.

The design by an up and coming architect bothered me a bit , 1" thick edge glued broads banded all around with 3" x 3" solid material. Not being really experienced with table making I asked about the design. The architect was obviously offended to be questioned and suggested he'd get somebody else to do the job if I didn't want it. No, I'd do it per plans.

A year after the table was done and paid for I heard through the grape vine the table had exploded in the middle of the night. Apparently, what happened was the edge glued boards expanded enough to break the 3/4" dowels in the corner lap joints of the 3 x 3 banding.

It turns out this was the second table of the same design the lady had purchased through the architect. Same explosion with the first one and the architect blamed it on the builder's shop not being heated to control wood moisture content. Lucky for me the lady never came back for her money, in today's market that table would have been in the $6K+ range.

[Reed Gray]

Doug, I am well experienced with the architect's 'well, it worked on paper' mentality after 30 years of residential construction....

Here is a clip from Alan Batty on box making. A master! It may answer some questions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzn0JrOgvM0

robo hippy

[Bill Jobe]

"don't remember getting a definitive answer to my question about using a rigid inserts, like metal, on the main body and on the lid to prevent distortion issues with wood movement."

Well, you completely lost me on that, Reed.

Here's the piece I'm trying to fit a lid to.

[Reed Gray]

Bill, rigid inserts can work, but only on small pieces. Kind of like the exploding table above, too big of a piece, and if you don't allow for enough room for expansion/contraction, you will get failure. I have seen PVC inserts on some urns, and they seem to be okay. The size of piece you show here is getting to the limits of being able to put any kind of rigid insert in. I would make a lid with the same grain orientation, and a loose fitting, not 'pops when you pull the lid off' type lid. Also, for future consideration, if I am planning a lid, I rough turn, no matter how big, little, or dry the piece is because they always 'adjust'. Love osage.

robo hippy

[John K Jordan]

Can someone direct me to a good thread, or better yet, a video, on how to turn lids. I have yet to succeed in making one that fits right.
Right now I'm trying to make a lid for a globe-shaped bowl made of Osage Orange and it's not going well. I turned the rim to about 45* and want the lid to sit flat and snug on that surface making a perfectly round bowl and lid. The lid, of course, will need a knob, but I can glue something there.

I understand you want a lidded bowl, not a lidded box with a snug fitting lid made from the same piece of wood (so the figure will match). Is that right? The lid can then be made from a complimentary or contrasting wood (or, of course with figure-matching wood). Ebony or indian rosewood would look great with osage.

Lids for face-oriented work (bowls) instead of end grain are problematic since the wood moves and are often doomed to wobble or at least turn "snug" into "stuck." I've been going about this a different way. I turn a matching taper in both the lid and the base. This way even if the wood moves a little the lid is still likely to fit. The more pronounced the taper the better for this. I tried this method first on a small test piece first before I made larger pieces. My prototype (which I thought was elm until the other John Jordan told me is hackberry) with a lid that fits over the rim:

(I've posted all these in the past)

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=343174&d=1472492341

It may be hard to see on this prototype but in the pic in the lower right the rim on the base is tapered in at the top.

This was the final piece, a Beads of Courage bowl/box, cherry, basswood:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=331657&d=1455501938

This one (another Beads of Courage vessel) has a pronounced taper, in this case to contain the music box (Yellow Poplar):

hhttp://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=332462&d=1456439187


JKJ

[Bill Jobe]

Beautiful pieces, John.
It's too late to use a piece of the same piece of OO, so perhaps I will go with a dark wood lid.
I don't have any of the wood types you mentioned, but I have a garage full of walnut. In your opinion would it look ok?

[John K Jordan]

Beautiful pieces, John.
It's too late to use a piece of the same piece of OO, so perhaps I will go with a dark wood lid.
I don't have any of the wood types you mentioned, but I have a garage full of walnut. In your opinion would it look ok?

Thanks.

Since the osage looks quite polished you might try a grain filler on the walnut to fill the pores and make it smooth. I've had good results from TruOil as well, sold as gun stock finish and often used by guitar makers. I think the brown would look nice with the osage, especially after the osage begins to turn brown itself. It's extra work, but I have made several lids just to see how they looked with a piece.

Since the shape of your osage piece is so nice now, it might be tricky to keep from overpowering it with the lid and destroying the lines. I'm imagining how a lid with a thin edge and a very slight curvature might look, made to fit down a little into the vessel to give it some thickness.

Or this may sound crazy - how about a lid that fit down substantially into the piece but with a thin edge just catching the edge with most of the lid inside the bowl, but with a recess cut into the top of the lid so a small knob might actually be sunken a bit below the rim, not even visible from the side view. That way an shape of the lid couldn't detract from or overpower the vessel shape. From the side it might actually look like a dark rim, maybe just 3/8" wide or so.

Regardless, I would either make a careful drawing of the piece and try sketching various lid shapes on top and see how they looked, or if you have experience with graphics programs like Photoshop try painting various lid shapes over a photo from the side.

Just thinking "out loud".

JKJ

[Bill Jobe]

Thanks, John.
The nice thing about it is that I can put a finish on the bowl and enjoy it without a lid while I try different ideas, especially since I do not have a (decent) chuck. Still using my trusty old HF 10x18. Since I'm still a novice lid turning is difficult at best.

[Mark Greenbaum]

If you're going to use walnut, perhaps ebonizing it with vinegar/steel wool mixture will make it black?

[Bill Jobe]

John, I just happen to have a bottle of steel wool stain on hand that I made a year or so back.
Thanks for the idea. I'll stain a piece or 2 and see how it looks.

Edit: I was responding to Mark's comment on this post. My apologies to you, Mark