Birds Eye - Bulls Eye

[Dave Peterson]

Boy, I bet that subject title just made you look, didn't it! LOL

Anyway......
The stock wood is Birds Eye maple, but was near the outer edge of the piece. There is one or two on there, but it has a nice pattern to it.

Of course, the repeating Bulls Eye is what catches your 'eyes' right away.

This was accomplished by taking assembling a dowel-within-a-dowel-within-a-dowel to make the bullseye.

The three-layer bullseye starts with a 3/8" walnut dowel. I drilled a 5/8" oak dowel with a 3/8" forsner bit, and put the two together. Going for broke, I decided to do one more layer, so I took a 1" walnut dowel and drilled a 5/8" hole in it with a forsner bit, then put the first "dowel-in-dowel" piece into it, creating three levels. To drill the holes, i used my lathe as a horizontal drill press with a drill chuck installed on the tailstock. (this only really works on short lengths, by the way). My 3-dowel piece ended up being about 1.3" in length.

I then drilled a hole into the side of the block, perfectly centered, both for depth and left-to-right on the block. My Birds eye maple stock was 1.81", so you can see the insert is recessed on this picture. That was OK, because I was going to cut it down that far anyway.



Not wanting to stop the process I decided to go for broke! I reversed the color combination and used a 3/8" oak dowel and put it in a 5/8" walnut dowel. I then flipped my maple stock 90 degrees and drilled a perpendicular hole to the first one (but not shown on the photo above). Also, centering is critical !!! This 2-dowel piece was longer, so it fit the 1.81" thickness of the maple stock. The smaller (two-layer dowel) was drilled right through the side of the bigger bulls eye from a right angle, then glued into place.

After turning and finishing, here is my bottle opener handle. (metal work from Rockler).



Measurements are critical for both placement and the drilling of the dowels. If you are off by .002 too thick on the insert stock, it will probably be big enough to split/crack the larger dowel when you try to insert it. A digital calipers is a must-have tool on this project.

One trick I did learn: When I made the first walnut-into-oak, the oak was drilled. I ran the full length of the walnut dowel through the center of the tailstock. I had the lathe turned on at about 180 RPM and just sort of spun the smaller rod into place by feeding it. I just cut it off after I got it inserted as far as it would spin.

I did not have the other dowels on hand, so I turned the 3/8" oak down down from a 5/8" dowel, and I turned a 3/4" walnut dowel down to the 5/8" dowel (for the smaller insert).

I started this project yesterday morning, and had the block glued up by last night. Turning and sanding only took about 90 minutes this morning.

This was a fun project and it will definitely catch the eye of whoever sees it!

[tryingtokeepmyfingers]

wow that is really nice.... very nice work.... thanks for sharing

[Bryan S]

It will catch you eye. I had to read it a couple of times before I picked up on the 2nd set of dowels being there, but I can be a bit slow. Great job

[bluedawg76]

very cool method.

[Dave Peterson]

I got to thinking about it, and the process might be able to be accomplished by reversing the process (in theory, anyway). I have not tried this (but might): drill a 1" hole in the block, glue and insert 1" dowel. After it dries, drill a 5/8" hole and glue & insert opposite color dowel. let dry. Then, drill a 3/8" hole, and put in dowel color that matches the 1" dowel color. The method would work IF the dowels are accurately made (but could be hand sanded until they fit just right). The drill press would have to be done slowly so as not to crack the rings.

[crokett]

That is beautiful. Thanks for the tutorial. I am going to have to try that on a bud vase or similar.

[ScottM]

Thanks for the tutorial.

[Trent Mason]

Very nice!

[rbizieff]

Looks great. Thanks for the write up on it too!