Let me share my collection of small woodturning projects that I enjoyed doing over the years. The size of the pieces is about two inches (5 cm) or so.
Avocado
This avocado is 2.5″ (6 cm) long. Turned from maple and finished with boiled linseed oil. I turned the avocado shape first, then rotated the project 90 degrees and turned half away. It was hard to chuck the avocado shape; I carved a recess in an off-cut block that was easy to chuck and used a double-sided adhesive tape to attach the avocado project.
Igloo
I turned this little igloo from basswood. I chose basswood because it is easy to carve. I used a V-tool to carve the “snow brick” pattern. This Wikipedia article helped me to understand how an igloo is constructed. According to the article I carved the brick grooves as a spiral.
When it was turned it looked like a sphere attached to a cylinder; I cut away some wood parallel to the turning axes to form the base and to achieve the igloo shape.
Painting the igloo was a real challenge: painting snow is not easy. I used multiple coats of acrylic paint mostly white and some blue. I used some glitter to get sparkles but didn’t like the effect: you may see some dark dots on the picture — the glitter reflects light as expected but also causes dark dots on the light background.
Bells
These bells are turned from maple. The smaller bell is 2 inches (5 cm) high.
I embellished the bells with the ornament using a small skew wood burner tip and acrylic paint.
I like turning maple because it is easy to turn. Maple is closed-grain wood so it is easy to polish. I finished the bells with three coats of linseed oil.
I used silver wire to attach clappers. These wooden bells do produce sounds though not as strong as metal bells.
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