New Guy

[Big Mike]

Hello everyone! I live in Rocky Mount and love woodworking. I specialize in boxes of all varieties, turned, flat work etc. I make a few pieces of small furniture for family and friends but mostly I build boxes decorative and functional.

I also love to turn and it is increasingly becoming a distraction from the flat work side of my shop. I originally started turning to learn how to turn decorative handles for some of my boxes. Then it progressed to flat grain turned boxes and now I do a lot of end grain boxes. I have also begun to turn a lot of bowls from green wood and in fact have more than a dozen roughed out right now and drying after alcohol soaks. I will have a lot ready for Christmas.

I came to this website by chance, stumbled upon it. I hope to meet some fellow woodworkers with common interests.

I have been woodworking for more than 30 years in a hobby sort of way. If it isn't fun I don't do it. Hope we can get together sometime and have a picnic like some of the other forums. I attended a woodworking picnic in July in Knoxville that was two days in the shop with a bunch of nice guys and gals and had a wonderful time. Hope to do it again.

 

[DaveO]

WELCOME, I'm glad you found us. I like to make boxes also, they're something that doesn't cost too much to make, but involve everything that any other woodworking project does. I have begun turning and find that I really like it too. Please post some pictures of your work in the gallery. We love pics. Thanks for introducing yourself. Dave:smile:

 

[SteveColes]

Welcome aboard, glad you stumbled in this direction:razz:

 

[cloudancer]

One of these day's I'll get caught up to the front of the welcome wagon . Anyhow, welcome aboard. Can't wait to see some of your work.

 

[sapwood]

Welcome Big Guy,

30 years experience is quite an addition to this site

I really look forward to seeing some pixs of your boxes. As a "newbie" I find box making an excellent way to learn more about woodworking. Of course, it helps that small pieces of wood are usually less expensive than large ones :exclaim: I keep resawing through my firewood looking for interesting grain--but usually I just find knotholes, worms, and lots of sawdust.

Roger

 

[LeeandDee]

the green bowls in an alchol soak?
I'd like to know more...

 

[clowman]

Welcome Big Mike, I feel sorta funny welcoming you to the site, when I have been reading your posts for a while and seeing your work. Anyway, glad to see you in the Who We Are forum!

 

[Big Mike]

the green bowls in an alchol soak?
I'd like to know more...

The alcohol soaking method is something I learned on another forum. It speeds up the process of drying green bowls and helps get them to finished form much faster. It was developed by a gentleman named Dave Smith in Washington state. I have been using for a little over a year now for both bowls and boxes and to this date I have had no failures. It has become very popular. You will find that the initial investment is pretty high as denatured alcohol is expensive.

Here is the link to Dave's original article explaining the technique:
http://www.woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/readarticle.pl?dir=turning&file=articles_473.shtml