Some friends of ours had a wastebasket with a shape that I liked, so I thought I'd make a wooden version just for the heck of it. It needed to be about 8" in diameter but it's pretty tough to find pieces of wood large enough to make an 8"-diameter tallish turning. Most turning blanks are long 'n thin or short 'n fat but I needed long 'n fat and as a result I failed to find any that were big enough, which pointed me toward doing some sort of lamination. In fact, this vessel ended up having two types of lamination; horizontal rings in the lower section and vertical segments in the upper.
I chose to use maple mostly because the original vessel was white and it is readily available in reasonably wide planks. The lower section has layers with alternating grain direction for a bit more layer contrast and the upper and lower sectons are separated by thin layers of roasted curly maple for some color contrast. About half of the time it took to make this vessel was spent on the pattern carved into the upper section. Making the laminations and segments was the bulk of remainder of the time with the actual turning being pretty quick at maybe 15% of the total time. Lotsa construction details can be found
here.
| Material: | Maple and Roasted Curly Maple |
| Construction: | Laminated, turned and carved |
| Finish: | 3 coats Miniwax Fast-Dry Poly, Clear Satin |
| Size: | 8" diameter x 11" tall |
| Done: | January 30, 2019 |
