Help, I can't stop making ornaments

[John Timberlake]

After the making 25 ornaments for my church and three for the Christmas turning contest, I decided to make some for myself and for friends.

The first batch are like the church ornaments with fir central hollow balls, walnut collars, and maple spindles. The second batch is made with hollow ash balls and maple spindles. Some of these were dyed with aniline dye in alcohol. The blue ones and one of the red ones had liming wax put on after the finish.

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[Bernie Weishapl]

John those are awesome. I started making ornaments after seeing your first ones. I like'em.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

John..........You're coming to other addicts looking for help?


You go Boy!.......Very nice ornaments!

[John Hart]

Geez John! You're out of control! I'll need to come over and get those out of your way.....you know...so you can make more.;) very nice!!:)

[Kevin McPeek]

Looks nice! Sounds like me last year, I think I did 30 something, This year about 7-8... so far.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Very nice work John! I really like the colors and am surprised at the amount of change you got with the liming wax. Again, very nice work!

[Joash Boyton]

hmmmm....may have to try some of those....

Lookin good:)

Joash;)

[Jon Shively]

John do you hollow the balls or buy them that way?

[Brian Myers]

They look great, why stop?:cool:

[Keith Burns]

Great ornements John :) :) I like the red dyed ones as well as the natural ones.

[Paul Engle]

Ain't it terrible being addicted ???:eek: Nice work John. Really like the bleached one.

[George Conklin]

John..........You're coming to other addicts looking for help?

That's rich!:D

Nice ornaments, John. Looks like you had a duplicator going on there;) .

[Don Orr]

There is a 12 step program just for this type of addiction.





Take 12 steps away from the lathe!:eek: :D

Very nice work!

[John Timberlake]

John do you hollow the balls or buy them that way?

For these, I used a 1/4" round nose scraper to hollow them through a 5/8" hole drilled in the end to with 1/4" of the top of the ornament. For most of them, this is the only tool I use for the hollowing, but sometime have to use a curved scraper. Don't figure it makes too much difference if I try to get the walls really thin.

[Barry Stratton]

"Orna-mania". Awesome collection!!!

[Jim Underwood]

Good job... nice looking ornaments...

Do they get easier after you make this many?

I've made four of this type of ornament so far, and though they've started looking better, I blew two of them up last night before taking a couple of hours to make the third one....:( And the last time I used my homemade hollowing tool, I found out the hard way that you really need to pay attention to the "uphill" "downhill" rule when hollowing. If you don't then the tool will catch and blow up the globe and/or pinch the snot out of your finger when the tool flips over. I've got a big Owie on my left pointing finger to remind me....:eek: :mad:

[John Timberlake]

Do they get easier after you make this many?

I am getting quicker and a little more practiced. Each of these took about any hour to 1.5 hours including the prep, turning, glue up, and finishing. I actually am going too fast and blew up a few of the last batch that were my fault, not defects in the wood.

[Ernie Nyvall]

Wow John, those look great. Looks like you're going orna-mental.:p