Segmented Vase

I was inspired by a vase called “Butterfly Vase” that I saw on a Pinterest page that grabbed the pic from Segmented Woodturners. I don’t have a membership so I couldn’t actually visit that page to read the details.

Materials
The body is cherry. The wedges are walnut. The feature ring is maple with padauk wedges. The mouth and feature ring border are cocobolo.

There are 340 pieces in all, and it’s roughly 12 inches tall by 9 inches in diameter.

Lessons Learned
Things I learned that I would have done differently. I think I had a different, more advanced feature ring in mind at first, and I cut the pieces rectangular like dominoes rather than trapezoidal like all of the other rings. Then, I had to cut them into trapezoids when they were small which took more time and was more difficult.

I made a sled for the router table to run the rings over the V-groove bit and that worked pretty well, but there was some tear-out that I had to turn away.

Serendipitously, I was able to reverse chuck the piece with expanding jaws to finish the bottom… I had planned on just finishing it off of the lathe but this way was better.

I don’t know if there’s a better way, but after I made the rings I sanded them flat. Then, I cut the V-grooves and glued in the wedges. Then, I had to sand the tops again. This was time consuming.

This was my second segmented turning piece and was a gift for my sister’s 50th birthday.

-- joefiz, Virginia