Yesterday I was near a Rockler so I stopped in (first time). The store wasn't too big but they had a lot of pieces of wood for turners. At the front door was a 4' square box full of round blanks (limited on time I didn't really look at them). I really stopped to get a tall feather board for resawing. But I found myself over by the pen blanks. In catalogs they often have 3/4" x 3/4" blanks, which are a little small for other things. Rockler had lots of larger sizes. I picked up a couple of 2"x2"x12" purple heart, red heart, and padauk. The purple heart is covered in sealer so I don't know if it's dry.

I'm thinking about trying to make some knobs for box lids. I have a sugar maple that I turned several bowls and lids from that are drying and thought maybe the contrasting color would be nice. So far the only lids I have made have been where the knob is just a part of the lid and the top of the lid is face grain. To maximize the wood it would make the top of the knob end grain. I did a google to see what the knobs would look like but that doesn't really give me a good idea what it would look like on a lid. Would a face grain lid with an end grain knob on top look "wrong"? Since the roughed maple lids are months away from being dry all I can do is guess.

The reason for asking is I might need to buy stuff to be able to turn it. I have a Vicmac 120 chuck and don't have a set of jaws that will hold something that small. Right now about the only way I could turn them with what I own is to cut them into 2" cubes and super glue them to a scrap block (then I could turn them with the grain pointing any direction I want). Is this the best way or would it be worth while to get something like Vicmarc's long nose jaws. I like the idea of the jaws moving the knob away from the body of the chuck but that could be just in my mind.

My idea was that I could use the jaws and tail stock to hold the blank. I could then turn a tenon on the tail stock side and turn the side of the knob. Once done I could cut the knob off of the blank with my chop saw then put the tenon in the chuck and finish off the top of the knob. Is this a good approach or am I just making it more complicated to justify buying a set of jaws?

Here's the last one I made. I used cherry since I had a piece of 8/4 lumber that wasn't kiln dried properly for the lid.
cherry box.jpg