So... why not some of my work

Let's start out with my Birthday cake from this year. It's almost as if Tammy knew exactly what I wanted.











Here's a few item's I've turned recently;


Last night I worked on an Ash bat for a friend of ours. She wanted to give it to her boyfriend for Christmas. It actually turned out pretty good and now Tammy wants on.
This is a Aspen vase I made to fit in a stand I had sitting around. It's not finished yet as I'm still trying to decide what kind of finish/finish work I want to do to it.
An Alder basket weave bowl I turned and burned. There's a basket weave patter on the top rim that was burned in.

A nice box elder bowl. Stands about 7" high and 10" across


One of my favorite pieces so far. A Cedar hollow form/vase that I turned, dremeled out the holes and burned with a butane torch

side view

This is one of my Elm vases I turned in the Trent class earlier this year. Finally got it dried and finished.
Some mini turnings I did. The walnut one (right) is about 2" high.

Another Mini. About 1" high, with a burned in pattern
This is from a piece of Old Pithy pine I had sitting around and decided to mess with one day. Sure glad this didn't become firewood.


And my winged aspen bowl. Turned completely on the lathe and the wings are left for artistic value on the piece.

Dr. Suess

Tammy went to the Dr. Seuss cake challenge yesterday to watch these AMAZING cakes be created. It was really hard to tell, down to the last minute who was going to win because they were all amazing.

The competitors were given all of the Dr. Seuss books 3 weeks ago and had to decide which book they were going to do. The kicker was, that one of the judges was the VP of marketing for Dr. Seuss incorporated so she knew all the exact details of the books and characters and colors and context.

The Cat in the Hat won and Green Eggs and Ham was 2nd. The comments about Horton Hears a Who, were that it was too busy and too much going on, the story and book are very simplistic, but the finished product was just amazing. The Grinch who stole Christmas just had a few issues with proportion but the details were incredible, the who people with their crazy hair, the dog and the sleigh.

I also learned a lot of Dr. Seuss trivia. Dr. Seuss started writing books in 1957 (this is the 50th anniversary of the Grinch) and at the time for children it was determined that there were 250 words that children needed to know most. He included 237 in his first book, the cat in the hat. But his editor bet him $50 that he couldn’t do a book with just 50 different words. Dr. Seuss won that bet with Green Eggs and Ham! He wrote his last book in 1990 – Oh the Places You’ll Go.

dead jack-o-lantern

Took this to work, it was a pumpkin spice cake, white chocolate buttercream frosting.

This weekend's cakes

Did a couple of fun cakes this weekend and a halloween pumpkin coming up this week.

Showing off Daddy's work

This past week Tammy's parents were in town for the week visiting the grandchildren and us. We had a good time with them and got a bunch of things done around the house. Lucy loves gardening and helped by cleaning up the back flower bed, weeding, and planting some new roses and other flowers to help ensure we have blooming flowers through out the summer and fall. We know have 2 beautiful Pink/Red rose bushes in the middle of our flower bed. Dave was able to assist me with redoing the sandbox that our wonderful puppy Pippen decided was a chew toy, as well as assisting with some other honey do's and small projects I had going in the shop. Tammy's father used to be a logger and so I took the opportunity to have him saw up some of the logs I had sitting around into bowl blanks. I think I now have a good supply for the next month or so. :-)

On Friday, Tammy Jo had surgery to remove her Gall Bladder. Ever since Kayti was born she's had problems with Gall stones and finally decided that the pain of them was enough to warrant having it removed. Hopefully this will ease some of her pain.


On Saturday I took some time to turn one of the hollow form's and my daughter decided she wanted to see it and have her picture taken. She's a great helper.

This weekends Cakes - Tammy

3 tier wedding cake for saturday, top layer is White Chocolate cake with chocolate chips, the middle is carrot cake with cream cheese filling, and the bottom is chocolate cake with rasberry filling. separated with real gerber daisies.














Did this Toyota Prius for a teenage girl's birthday....closest she is going to get to owning one. Its red velvet cake with cream cheese filling and a marshmallow fondant cover.

2007 Woodturning Symposium Instant Gallery

Wanted to share some of the pictures from the 2007 Rocky Mountain Woodturner's Symposium. The following are the pictures from the Instant gallery. There was some amazing pieces this year from some very amazing wood turners.


This is a Funeral Urn from Lee Whiteside. It has an octagon middle to it like a bolt. A Very nice piece.

These are some natural edge platter's from Rex Burningham. Also the 3 Peppermills in the background are his as well. He did a demo on these and truly makes fantastic Natural Edge platters.

The next 2 are from Ron Gerton. He made an amazing bowl that was 2 1/2 feet approx across and made for a very striking piece. He came back and wrapped the edge with some sort of resin I believe. As you see in the 2nd picture, he lined the inside of it what I believe to be scroll sawed pieces, letters, and shapes.

This is some very interesting pieces from Trent Bosch. I really appreciate this work as I had the pleasure of attending one of Trent's classes earlier this year. He makes amazing looking knots that are joined with cast brass or metal knots to make the sculpture. You'll also notice the small bowl to the left. That was made by one of his daughters and shown in the gallery.


I very much liked this piece as I'm partial to the copper stands and their use with wood turnings. This was made by Steve Harding and is a great Sphere shape. The one in the background is a Much larger sphere and very impressive as well.

Allen Jensen turned these three pieces, all hollow forms.


I had the pleasure of seeing up close these pieces from H.P. Thode. They may look out of place at a wood turning symposium, however when you find out that these pieces are all to scale versions of these masterpieces which require you to turn all the spindles to accuracy. They suddenly appeal to all wood turners.


Ken Eberle turned these fine pieces of segmented turnings. I had the pleasure of talking with him Sunday morning prior to the symposium opening. He has taken an amazing leaps in his turnings from his first turning lesson's at a RV Park (I believe I recall) to his amazing pieces below. He documents the number of pieces as well as the amount of hours associated with each piece. He is correct when he told me that doing segmented turnings like this definitely takes Patience


Another Piece from Rex Burningham, a fantastic natural edge piece that looks like a comet.

A Pierced turning by Phil Lackey. All the holes are randomly different, as well as becoming less frequent towards the back.


A great piece by Ron Gerton, a Hanging hollow form. Great mixture of what I believe to be metal and wood.
One of David Nittman's amazing basket weave looking pieces. If you have not seen one up close you are missing out. You literally need to be within a foot or less before the basket weave illusion begins reveal itself as something else. He is a master at these pieces. This one is also decorated similarly on the bottom of the piece.

Donald Derry had a very interesting looking Rice Bowl here. Turned, Carved, decorated and formed to make a artistic piece.
Gene Westworth had this square turned lidded bowl for lack of a better description. Some very beautiful wood and detailed details :-) in this piece.

Doug Schnieder turned these hollow forms with voids. His placement of these voids as he shapes the form really add an amazing effect to them.
A few of Gordon Dekrey's Segmented turnings
The Amazing Cindy Drozda's Turnings and the great finiale's on them.

Bud Smith's Hollow forms with "Necklaces". Very neat accents to the piece. I believe I heard he makes these accents himself to work with the form better.
3 of Dave Kaufman's Hollow form's and platters. As you can see it doesn't appear he uses a solid piece of wood for his work. Always has to have some void, which he works very well into his pieces.
Curt Will had this piece on display. It struck me as interesting. Often you hear of natural edge bowls but not often do you see a natural edge hollow form or one that incorporates the bark edge of the tree.
Another one of David Nittman's pieces. This is a Large Striking platter that is approx 2' or more across.
And finally we have some segmented pieces from Curt Thebold. Although it's hard to see the segments with the wood grain and bleaching, but all three are segmented but are blended very well.

Labor day fun

This is Troy, Kayti and I sitting by a Stream in Red Feather labor day weekend. We had a good time. Kayti is waving with her hands on her chin... always being cute.