Ellsworth on Woodturning: How a Master Creates Bowls, Pots, and Vessels

Introduction

– The Creative Process

My father, Ralph Ellsworth, was an academic librarian, so it was drilled into me from an early age that the reader has a right to expect a certain amount of wisdom from every book he reads. Now, this might seem ambitious for a book about woodturning, but I’ll work on that. My real problem is whether there’s an age requirement for wisdom. That said, I have taken the somewhat conventional stance that the creative process, like cell division, is ongoing. If I miss something the first time around, there is always the possibility of a second edition. And were that to happen, I promise to mount my soapbox and wave the flag of wisdom from the very first page.

This book is about developing bowls and hollow forms made from wood and turned on a lathe. This is what I do. And I specifically use the word develop because, while I have been a maker of objects since childhood, I was slightly past thirty when I began to establish the focus of my creative energies. Thus, while I intend to provide a complete account of my knowledge on this subject, I also expect those of you who follow my lead to fumble, mumble, and outright fail in many of your attempts at making these objects, especially hollow forms. Failing is good: It’s just part of the process. And if you don’t blow up a few pieces along the way, you’re either taking the safe way out or being entirely too serious about the whole woodturning experience.

The great value of turning objects on the lathe is not so much what you make, but the process you experience when making it. It is the power of this process—the direct engagement with a material, of making something that is within the mind’s eye, and of being totally accountable for successes and screwups—that allows you to evolve from object to object throughout the rest of your life.

What, then, does it feel like to experience a relationship with a material through a process? Can you learn to laugh, to enjoy that inner pride when something actually does come off the way you planned it, or even when you didn’t plan it? Or maybe it’s simply that you have created a block of time to be by yourself...just for the opportunity to experience the experience of making.

David Ellsworth, Spirit Form, 2000. Lacewood; 2 high x 6 wide x 6" deep. These low forms are some of my favorites. They evolved from hard-edge low forms I made during the mid 1970s.

David Ellsworth, Walnut Pot, 2006. Claro walnut burl; 6 high x 8 wide x 8" deep. I frequently create this type of full-volume form to let the beauty of the wood speak for itself.

To help explain what I feel when turning on the lathe, let me tell about a little boy who grew up in two worlds. The first world, his winter world, began in the middle of America—1944, in Iowa, with snowy, gray winters cold enough to chill the bones through all of the layers of a woolen snowsuit. Growing up in Iowa in the 1940s and 1950s gave a kid a solid foundation for just about everything. You learned to live by the Golden Rule, you went to church, you got a good education, you knew your friendships would last forever, and your horizons were always in view. Iowa was a good place to grow up, and once you’d moved away, you knew it was a great place to be from.

The boy’s second world, his summer world, came with his family’s annual trips to their cabin in the mountains of Colorado. This was where things really happened, where his fantasies became reality, and where there was no horizon beyond which imagination could not see. In this world, you didn’t just play cowboys and Indians; you became cowboys and Indians. His role was to make their toys of battle: bows, arrows, and quivers; tomahawks and slings; knives, spears, whips, and guns. All were created from wood and leather, using the simplest of tools: a handsaw, a knife, a hatchet, and a punch that had been a nail. Here, the boy would explore the forest and the rivers, and challenge the Chinook winds by leaning into them over rocky cliffs. The sounds and the smells, the texture of the land and the light of the darkening sky, became his teachers, and this is where he learned the value of being alone while never feeling lonely.

In the summer world, the boy heard many stories of the Native Americans from an elderly Blackfoot man named Charles Eagle Plume. The story that he enjoyed the most told how a warrior could walk silently through the forest... even at night. And so, he taught himself to move without sound by placing each downward step toe-first, to discover the rising of the earth and how to meet it with equal force. He then learned to reach with outstretched arms to the trees and the rocks, first in the daylight with eyes closed, and then in the dark, discovering their energy, the radiance of their warmth, and their smell. In his many trials, he would mostly fail. And when he finally did succeed, it was only after accepting the presence of his surroundings as an equal to his own.

That boy was my past, and though over the years most of those toys have disappeared, the memories of my childhood interactions with the natural world and of me as a maker remained. And yet, it would take many years, long after I had developed my skills as a craftsman, before I realized how these childhood interactions related directly to my experiences in turning wood.

Specifically, I learned to let the tip of the sharpened tool seek the energy of the wood not as a conqueror, but as an equal. And I realized that a successful cut occurred only when I presented the tool to the wood as if the two were shaking hands. I learned to sense the varying densities of my materials, and to adjust the energy of the cuts so that I could work as efficiently at 30 off the tool rest as at 3. Sound helped determine wall thickness, not simply because a thin wall makes a tone when being cut with a tool, but because the consistency of the wall thickness relates directly to the tones produced.

And then there are the smells: the ponderosa and piñon that always seemed to be a part of my surroundings, the fresh-cut sugar maple from the first cabinet shop I visited when I was twelve, the sugar-sweet odor of Brazilian rosewood, and the acrid smell of zebrawood that made me cough and think of camel dung (whatever that smells like).

Teaching oneself a skill without a teacher available is laborious, yet ultimately self-fulfilling. I learned each mistake one day became a learning tool for the next, and swearing was a good thing if it helped me understand that catching the tool in the wood wasn’t the tool’s fault after all...or the wood’s. I learned to make my own tools, to develop my own techniques, and to challenge the limits of my own experiences. Equally important, I learned to become a problem solver. Years later, I would realize all highly skilled craftspeople are also highly skilled problem solvers.

In looking back to my first experiences at turning hollow forms during the mid-1970s, I have come to realize something carries us daily from where we have been to where we wish to be, and it goes beyond the beauty of wood, the ingenuity of our tools, or the power, fragility, subtlety, or grandiosity of our objects. It relates to our engagement in the centering process. I have heard many other creative people refer to this same experience, whether it involves drawing, throwing a ceramic pot, blowing glass, or beading. I simply refer to it as the process of discovering that wonderful element of personal mystery. So, throughout this book, I will do my best to pass on all of my knowledge and skills, but I will not take away your right to discover for yourself the personal sense of mystery that evolves for you through the turning process. This mystery will be your gift to yourself...and so it should be.

David & Wendy Ellsworth, Collaborative Mandala Platter, 1990. Satinwood and glass seed beads; 1 high x 13 wide x 13" deep.

David Ellsworth, Natural-edge bowl, 2008. Poplar; 7 high x 8 wide x 7" deep.

Chapter 1

Working with Green Wood & Dry Wood

The universal law in all of woodworking is that wood moves. Dry wood, having released most of its moisture and done most of its moving, is more predictable and stable than green wood, the fibers of which are full of moisture yet to evaporate. Naturally, the processes for working with dry wood and green wood differ, though working with a wood that is either air- or kiln-dried is no guarantee movement will not occur. Whether working with dry or green wood, you can use wood moves as a credo; it will help to explain your various aesthetic approaches, design styles, and methods of work.

David Ellsworth, Hickory Pot, 2006. Hickory; 7 high x 8 wide x 7" deep. The pith runs diagonally through this form, creating distortion through the piece.

David Ellsworth, Bowl, 2004. Poplar; 4 high x 9 wide x 7" deep. This rough-turned bowl shows rise in pith areas where the shrinking long grain fibers have pushed the end-grain fibers out and up.

You must consider a variety of factors when evaluating a species for your piece. This choice is affected by color, texture, personal preference, and the function of the piece. However, consideration must also be given to the wood’s inherent potential to move, as that will ultimately affect things like type of finish and choice of joinery—in fact, even whether joinery can be used at all. Additionally, magnitude and direction of movement often will be inconsistent throughout certain species. This is why you would not generally use madrone burl, eucalyptus, or lignum vitae to make dovetail joints...at least not more than once. Successful joinery depends on appropriately oriented grain, the right glue, and a functional finish. The most beautiful design might fail if the wood movement is not considered. Movement in wood is a critical influence in how you approach design and even what type of objects you design. All of these methods of work not only reflect the processes you use when making, but also accommodate movement of the materials.

Working green wood versus dry wood

It is tempting to draw a line between woodworkers according to whether they use green or dry materials. When working with dry wood, the end result is very predictable and directly reflects the original design. Drawings are almost always required, and, assuming you remember to measure twice and cut once, the finished object will most likely look just like the drawing. In this respect, working with dry materials is in most cases like color photography: What you see is what you get.

By contrast, working with green wood is like diddling with the developing process in the darkroom, trying to get that ultimate black-and-white print. When turning green wood, you can tinker and toy, but you can’t guarantee a board will stay flat from dawn to dusk, much less from season to season. You can’t make a dovetail joint. You can’t sand without gumming up your sandpaper. Finishes don’t dry, because the wood isn’t dry. Sketches are a great place to start, but detailed drawings are useless. Worse, customers don’t much care for that telltale pop when their beautiful new bureau top splits open in the middle of the night.

Why work with green wood?

So what’s the big attraction in working with something you can’t control?

Well, when I started working with green wood in the late 1970s, I quickly realized control was the wrong approach. As soon as I replaced that term with discover, I encountered an entirely new path in working with wood. The great challenge in working with green materials is anticipating what direction the movement might take and how much might occur.

In this respect, the turner of green materials works very much like the potter, the glassblower, and the jeweler, in that he must learn the intrinsic nature of his materials—and their movements—in order to become an effective designer and maker.

The distortions in the green-turned bowls shown here are predictable, and therefore, you can easily project these movements into your design. The rim movement in the poplar bowl at left is subtle, whereas that in JoHannes Michelsen’s cowboy hat in madrone burl (below) is dramatic. The hickory pot, shown on page, presents the eye with a very unusual shape: the wood movement was utilized simply by orienting the grain diagonally through the form. This sense of movement takes the form out of the realm of bowls and brings it up to the level of a sculpture.

One hazard of turning green wood is a bowl isn’t necessarily a good bowl just because its shape is distorted. I have produced a lot of dogs over the years while learning how to manage green materials so that my successes would outweigh my attempts. Each new log or root or burl becomes a challenge, and I am always seeking a balance between what I think I know and what I have yet to learn. One of my early learning experiences was the apple hollow form shown on page. At 9 in diameter and 1/16 thick, it was a real challenge just to make. After it dried, I realized how much the distortions in the surface competed with the shape. The hard-edged rim and the undulating top just made the form look strange.

JoHannes Michelsen, Cowboy Hat, 2001. Madrone burl; ¾ high x 2 long x 1½" wide. The surface distortions in this hat reflect the internal tensions within the burl during the drying process.

In truth, we greenies seek movement in our work, while the plankers seek to avoid it. Now don’t take offense at these terms, because ever since I started working with green wood, I’ve been ribbing my furniture friends about their use of dry wood. They, of course, come right back with the notion that my green chest of drawers might be a little difficult to sell. And I respond with, Yeah, but my old man made a love seat out of green aspen wood back in the ‘40s, and I am living proof that it worked just fine. And on it goes.

David Ellsworth, Vessel, 1978. Apple; 4 high x 9 diameter x 1/16" thick. Distortion competes with the hard-edged design of this hollow form, demonstrating that not all green wood forms end up as winners.

David Ellsworth, Vessel, 1978. Walnut; 7 high x 8 wide x 8" deep. In this piece, I made the classic mistake of trying to make the biggest hollow form I could out of a block and ended up positioning the pith right next to the entrance hole. It gave the hole an interesting lilt, but I saw these elements as competing within the form. Early experiments are sometimes the best teachers.

An extraordinary wealth of raw material

There is much to say in defense of greenies. We get to work with an extraordinary wealth of raw material that is available to us, most of which is free or very inexpensive. We get to pretend we’re real woodsmen and tromp around in the forest listening to the birds and experiencing all the other wonders Mother Nature has to offer. We get to learn what a tree actually looks like, including its shape, color, bark, and leaves. We get to pull the poison ivy vines off downed trees and choose whatever tree part we want to work with, including the trunk, limbs, crotches, stumps, and even the occasional burl. We get a chance to meet the owner of the property where the tree came from, and maybe make a nice trade for a few finished salad bowls. And if we’re really, really lucky, we’ll also do a bit of trading with our chiropractor at the end of the day.

The main problem in working with green wood, besides the fact it’s tough to make a chest of drawers with it, is you can’t go to school to learn about it. Instead, you simply have to get out there, get dirty, and do it. Once you’ve seen that raw color and smelled that fresh odor and watched the patterns of grain in the various regions of the tree—you’ll never again look at a bowl or a vessel or a finished piece of furniture without a quiet appreciation. The more you know about your raw materials, the broader your experiences will be, and the more fluid your life as a designer and maker will become.

David Ellsworth, Black Pot-Dawn (detail), 2000. 7 high x 3½ wide x 3½" deep. This piece of ash shows the effects of fire. The soft-spring grain fibers show deep etching in the surface from the flames. The result is a striated pattern showing the movement of the grain through the form. For more about using fire, see Chapter 16, Finishing, on page.

Chapter 2

Managing Materials

Before you can turn a chunk of green wood, there are a few steps you must take, and a variety of steps you can take if you choose. If you’re not using the wood right away, you must store it properly. There are ways to create effects in the wood, such as spalting, if you so desire. Additionally, preparing a burl for turning requires some special attention. When it comes to preserving the materials you have, the most important task is to figure out how to minimize change. Before detailing how this can be done, I’ll explain the basic elements of what wood is and how it responds to change.

The classic burl features rays extending from the core to the bark, culminating in surface points or pins.

Characteristics of wood

All wood species have three characteristics in common: mass, tension, and a cellular structure. Understanding the subtle relationship between the three elements will influence every aspect of how you manage and preserve these materials.

Wood does not respond well to extreme changes in temperature or humidity. So, while it’s important to know the wood's condition when you receive it, it is equally important to consider the climate in which you are going to store, and ultimately use, the materials.

You can learn a lot about the inherent tensions in wood by looking at a piece of dried veneer. There is so little mass in the thin veneer that after it is cut from the green log, the natural tensions within the fibers are quickly released via the elasticity of the fibers as they progress from a green to a dry state. The result is a crinkled or rippled surface. A 2"-thick plank from the same tree will have its own tension, but because of its mass, it must be dried carefully to prevent cracking.

Some species of wood are packed with resins (cocobolo) and some seem bone-dry (ash). Some have fibers the size of silk threads (boxwood), while others’ fibers seem like soda straws (cottonwood). Some species will take only a standing finish (lignum vitae), while others will soak up half their weight in oil (poplar). Some contain silica to help dull our tools (eucalyptus), and some cut so finely you hardly have to resharpen (holly). Some trees even come with their own internal support system (above).

Metal rods are commonly used to support the crotch of a tree.

Wood tension

Regardless of how a piece of wood is dried, or how long it has been sitting around, fiber tension remains. This bog oak bowl is a good example of the amount of tension wood retains, even after several thousand years of being buried in a peat bog. Imagine what happens when you take an antique table from Philadelphia to Phoenix. It’s no wonder it opens up.

David Ellsworth, Bog Oak Bowl, 2003. Irish bog oak; 2 high x 7 wide x 5" deep. Tension exists even in this very old piece of bog oak.

Preserving materials

The question is this: What do you do to preserve your materials once you have them? This is where the furniture makers have it over us turners. They can select their boards well in advance and stack them in almost any enclosed space where the temperature and humidity are reasonably constant. Turners– especially those of us who turn green wood–often face a feast-or-famine situation where we have to contend with entire logs, roots, or burls. How do we control the cracking or rotting that occurs in the time it takes to turn up an entire log?

The easy answer is to invite a bunch of friends over and share the log. This is a common practice with the turning clubs that exist both privately and as affiliates of the American Association of Woodturners. Opening up a tree is like cutting a hole in the roof of your house: Nasty things can happen. So, short of leaving the log whole, the first thing you want to consider is what you wish to do with the material.

The most common practice is to block up the log into desired shapes using a chainsaw and then coat the end-grain surfaces with a couple of coats of wood sealer, such as Anchor Seal. Painting or waxing the ends of the blocks doesn’t work very well, because as the wood shrinks over time, it pushes moisture out of the end grain, which lifts the paint or wax right off the surface. This is not a problem with wood sealer, as it both sticks to the wood and breathes to slowly let the moisture through.

The next step is to store the blocks in a cool, neutral climate, out of the sun and wind. Garages and barns are ideal because they’re easy to back the truck up to. Air-conditioning in any space is evil for both green and dry wood, as it will draw moisture too quickly out of the wood.

If your intent is to turn the blocks up within a few weeks or months, wrapping them in plastic bags is another good solution because it completely isolates the blocks, not allowing any moisture to escape. If you’re bagging fresh-cut green wood, be careful not to leave the blocks too long, or mold and rot can occur.

In hot, dry climates like the desert, bagging is the only way to save solid green blocks. Some people will even buck up a tree and bag it on site just to keep it from cracking in the truck on the way back to the workshop. Others will spray the bagged blocks with water while they’re turning the form just to keep moisture levels high. The constant heat and aridity is why so many turners in these climates have gone to making segmented turnings. Tiny pieces of wood that are already kiln-dried and glued together don’t exhibit any significant change in shape, with the result that any overall form movement in these extreme climates is very minimal.

In colder climates, freezing the logs is the best option. My first experience with freezing wood was when I lived in the mountains of Colorado from 1977 to 1981. This was the period when I began working with green wood. It was obvious that solid green blocks and logs (when I could find them) wouldn’t last long in the dry and frozen winter climate at 8,500 feet. My answer was to pack them in snowbanks during the winter and dig them out as I used them.

Where I now live, in the more humid climate of Pennsylvania, I am blessed with dense hardwoods. I can leave my logs whole under the canopy of the forest, where they don’t get much direct sunlight; they’ll stay in good turning condition for quite a few months. An added plus for me, because I enjoy working with spalted wood (see Spalting wood on page), is that the combined heavy leaf cover, moist climate, and high humidity make it easy to spalt wood in a few months. The difficulty I have is woods like silver maple spalt so quickly you can hardly get through a tree before the whole thing rots. But the exciting part is while I’m working my way through the log, the designs of the pieces I make vary as the wood's condition changes—the first piece being made from fresh-cut wood and the last from heavily spalted wood.

When it comes to preserving the materials you have, your most important task is to figure out how to minimize change.

Spalting wood

Spalting is Mother Nature’s way of turning trees and other organic materials into the forest floor. Spalting is a natural process in which fungi attack the living cells of organic material. This process occurs in dead or dying trees, leaves, or any other compostable material. I have been told the fungi exist throughout the earth’s surface, but they only manifest in areas where there is both heat and moisture. I guess that eliminates the Arctic and most high-altitude or desert regions.

The spalting activity decomposes the cells in wood, with the result that it also reduces the natural tensions or growth stresses within the material. The reason it's important to me is I know I will get somewhat less overall form distortion when turning a spalted piece of wood compared with a non-spalted piece. In fact, some spalted pieces are so decomposed there is no tension left in the wood and, therefore, no distortion in the finished piece, even though the wood was dripping wet when I turned it.

The reason most turners use spalted wood is that the material can be intoxicatingly beautiful. The dark graphic markings left by the spalting activity—technically known as melanized pseudosclerotial plates, but commonly called zone lines—record the progress of the spalting activity as it migrates through the wood along the long fibers. The zone lines come in various colors from brown to black, depending on species. They are also wickedly destructive to any sharpened tool edge—like those of chain saws and band saws, for example—as they are no longer part of the wood, but made of a carbonized, iron-based composition.

Dark zone lines, which are created by spalting activity, are destructive to sharp tool edges but can be very beautiful when incorporated into a piece.

Creating effects in the log

I’ve discovered a variety of ways to help Mother Nature create interesting effects in logs of my choosing. For example, some years ago, I inadvertently left a section of an ash log sitting with the end grain directly on the ground. I forgot about it until, one day a year later, I turned it over and trimmed off the mud to discover that capillary action had drawn the minerals out of the soil and turned the log from the original ash white to a rich gray–honey brown. I’ve had mixed results when trying the method with other woods like maple and oak; in most cases, I would simply get spalting activity, sometimes mixed with a little rot. The lesson is this: Don’t be afraid to experiment if there’s a certain effect you’re seeking. Who knows what Mother Nature will cook up?

Whether working with these active spores is safe is an unanswerable question. I’ve posed it to my students who are doctors and I get a very consistent answer that sounds something like this:

The active spores in spalted wood don’t actually cause a definitive lung disease, but like all wood dust, they certainly will fill the sacs in lungs, which can lead to lung disease. And then, For some people, there may also be an allergenic problem with mold. My solution is to be cautious and wear dust protection when working with spalted wood and especially when sweeping out the workspace.

Other times, when I take down a tree, I’ll cut the log into rounds with lengths corresponding to the height or the diameter of what I’d like to make. I then leave the log on the ground with just the space of the saw cut between the rounds. Depending on rainfall, sunlight through the trees, and maybe some beer, and a little yeast, I’ll get spalting entering from both ends of each round.

On the other hand, if I want spalting only on one side of the finished piece, I’ll cover one end of the round with plastic and leave the other end exposed to the elements. The effects can be interesting—sometimes quite dramatic, sometimes junk. It’s worth using your imagination and experimenting to see what comes about.

On occasion, I will turn a vessel form to a finished shape, then wrap it in plastic with a few shavings from a heavily spalted piece of wood. After a few months, the vessel's surface will begin to spalt, and I can trim the shape and hollow it out. The result is a spalted surface exactly where I want it. To stop the spalting process and kill the fungi, simply dry out the wood.

In the late 1980s, I wanted to introduce some gray tones to the sapwood of a piece of redwood lace burl I was working on. To get the gray tones, I tried to spalt the sapwood area by wrapping it with some spalted maple shavings that contained a good dose