A buddy of mine sent around a link to a photo of an impressive wooden ball constructed from 60 triangular pieces of plywood (the one in the hand above). It is especially neat since the rounding on each piece produces a sort of contour-map effect from the wood plys. I considered making something similar but I don't get along well with precisely-mitered angles, so making a 60-piece fit-it-together-perfectly sphere wasn't something I particularly wanted to try.
However, I thought a modest little project would be to make a triangle-based octohedron (8-sided solid) from which to turn a ball. Ultimately I ended up with 4 balls, all made from different plywoods from my shop, including a walnut and maple variety that I stacked up myself for this purpose. I've made wooden
spheres before from solid wood and I used much the same technique for these.
And then once they were done they needed something to keep them from rolling away so I
made a shallow little display bowl, also out of plywood just to keep with the theme.
| Material: | Birch, Baltic Birch, Softwood, Maple/Walnut plywoods |
| Construction: | Turned, Laminated and turned, Carved |
| Finish: | Conservator's Wax, 2 coats |
| Size: | 2.3" typical diameter. Holder 5.9" dia x 1.9" high |
| Done: | February 10, 2020 |
