Last recital for Columbus American School for Double Bass

The American School for Double Bass in Columbus is closing. This is because Mark Morton, the artistic director and principle bassist for the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, has taken a job at Texas Tech University. We're all very sad about this and about the possibility that the CSO might be going under.





The final school recital was on May 4th. Meghan played a selection by Faure.


















Take a bow, Meghan.
















Mark Morton played some Bottecini.
















It's always such a pleasure to hear Mark play at these recitals. I'm going to miss him.

















Mark also played a Chopin etude. Very nice!










Shao-Lan Lee is Meghan's teacher and she always plays a piece for the recital, also. Meghan will continue her studies with Shao-Lan.









Mark Morton and Shao-Lan Lee.

Home improvement, wren style

May 4, 2008. A morning walk around the OSU wetlands park yielded a nice surprise. We're always on the lookout for nesting activities this time of year, and we spotted this freshly excavated space.









Look who's home - a House Wren.












He was very busy cleaning out stuff , making the hole bigger, and bringing in nesting materials.











After each trip, he'd get on a branch near the opening and advertise this prime real estate.












Hmmmm - this is a problem to be solved. He couldn't take the twig in like that.
















After several attempts, he did manage to get it into the nest.











Hey, sweetie! Look at the nest I'm building. Come and get it. Strings attached, but the the house is great. Hey, sweetie!













Other sightings: The spectacular Great Blue Heron.












Song Sparrow.














Northern Rough-winged Swallow.

J. Paul Fennell visits Central Ohio Woodturners - - Part II

The second half of J. Paul Fennell's demonstration focused on surface enhancement and carving techniques. Paul started the afternoon session by talking about design inspirations. He shared a couple of books, including: "Photography and the art of seeing." I can't remember the name of the other book and I forgot to snap a picture of it. Maybe Paul will send me a note to remind me and I'll update the blog to include the title.





The first texturing technique was pretty cool. Scored, parallel lines along the length of a turning. Paul first prepped a surface to use for the demonstration.








The scored lines are put in using a homemade tool that can cut evenly spaced grooves into the wood. The last groove of each pass serves as the guide for the next set.








This is Paul's grooving tool. It's a file with a cutter of several teeth soldered to the end.











Here's a closer look at the tool and its components.












The cutting teeth are from a die for tapping holes. Parallel edges are ground down to leave a flat surface where the teeth from two sides are exposed.














A length of this is snapped off and soldered to the file to make the grooving tool.
















It's a pretty cool effect. I've seen several of Paul's hollow forms that have this texturing. It adds a wonderful dimension to a beautiful turning. At one point, Paul was adding metal leaf over the grooved surface and that added another interesting effect.






The grooves can be deepened using another homeade tool - basically a point tool where two sides are ground as in a skew and the top surface is slightly relieved into a negative rake. It's kind of a hybrid between a scraper and a skew.
















Here's the side profile.












Before Paul started his carving demonstration, he talked about design layout. He uses a grid system where he draws lines onto the vessel prior to drawing the pattern. To facilitate making this layout graphing paper, he designed an indexing system where you can put any number of divisions onto the vessel. This is the wheel part of it. I didn't get a good detail shot of how the pin set-up works, but you can see the slots in the wheel. He has a sliding stop that fits into each of those grooves.





Alas, poor Yorick!

Alternatively, it could be "The thinker."

However, it was the vessel Paul was using for his carving demo.







Paul used an air-driven power carver that runs at 400,000 rpm. This particular one is made by NSK.








Paul made a manifold to run 6 carvers simultaneously for his hands-on class. After using it the next day, he's going to do some tweaking of the design.








This is a really neat design where the grooves have sharp edges.










Tool marks are cleaned up using small sanding disks placed in a micromotor tool. Paul uses double-sided masking tape to connect the disk to the mandrel. Disks of various sizes are cut with a leather punch.








This is going to be a really neat piece when it is finished. The wood is Eucalyptus, and it has some stunning figure.








Paul showed his piercing technique using a thin piece of wood.











A bit of heat is generated.










Here are some of the designs Paul showed us.












A few more here.











Paul has started an online company called "BursforCarving.com." All of the burs he demonstrated are available here. They are topnotch dental lab burs and I've been beta testing them. I highly recommend you try them if you are a woodcarver.






The last technique Paul demonstrated was a texturing pattern that used an engraver and a variable speed controller.







Paul used a rounded over nail to vibrate a random pattern over the surface.

The afternoon session went very well and everyone enjoyed the demonstration and the time spent with Paul.

J. Paul Fennell visits Central Ohio Woodturners - Part I

We had a fantastic demo from J. Paul Fennell on May 3rd. Central Ohio Woodturners met at Wood Werks, as usual (thanks, Ron!).



We had a good turnout, but not nearly what we should have had for such an excellent opportunity. I don't know why it is that our club members don't want to pay a small fee for an internationally known turner, but that seems to be the way it is for every major tuner we bring in for a visit. $25 for an all-day demo and lunch is a bargain!






One of the things Paul is known for his thin-walled hollow forms, and he spent most of the morning demonstrating his techniques for this project.


The walls are uniformly thin throughout the vessel. Paul passed around a couple of hollow forms he had cut apart.











He also demonstrated his texturing technique that produced these uniform lines. See part II of this topic when I post it.

















Here's the interior of this one.

















The hollowform was turned end grain with the pith in the center. Paul uses green wood. He was turning a piece of ash for the demo.








The hollowform shape was done between centers.











The headstock end of the form will be where the tenon is formed for the chuck. The top of the form is toward the tailstock.









Nice shavings coming off the tool.











Once the general shape is made, refinements are done to fine tune the form.










Sheer scraping with the gouge. I think this was a Glaser gouge, but I could be wrong.









The inside edge of the flute is used for a fine sheer scrape.










Part of the base was removed to allow shaping of the foot of the vessel.











The parting tool was also used to form the tenon for the chuck.










That nub had to be removed before the vessel could be chucked.









Paul had a nifty folding saw to take off the nub.













The tailstock was brought up to help center and seat the vessel into the chuck.








A slight depression was put into the top to guide the tailstock live center.











Fine tuning the centering and adjusting the chuck was next.










Paul then opened a bit of the neck.











He reverse turns for hollowing. This technique makes a lot of sense - you can see what you're doing, and the tool handle can be placed next to your body rather than out in thin air.







The tailstock was brought back up so the foot area could be shaped a little more. This is needed to assist with a uniform wall thickness down the length of the vessel.








Paul had a gun borer to drill the center hole. This was a cool technique to see. The handle attaches to an air compressor and there is a hole bored through the shaft.








The tape is the depth gauge. A little parafin wax on the tool shaft makes this step go pretty quickly. Paul coated the tool shaft with wax as soon as he finished drilling the hole.










Here's a look at the business end of the borer.










The adapter end for the air compressor fitting.










Once the central shaft is drilled, the hollowing commences. The first thing to do is to remove the bulk of the interior.









Before too much material is removed, the surface is scraped in preparation for sanding. This scraper has a bit of a negative rake to it.










Very fine curls are coming off that surface. The negative rake is pretty obvious in this image.








Another scraper, modified from several others out there on the market, including one by Mark St. Leger and a similar one by Nikos Sirigas. If I recall correctly, I introduced Paul to this kind of scraper when I did a demo for the Arizona Woodturners a few years ago.







This scraper is one of my favorite tools, and it did a great job on this vessel.










Refining the shape of the neck.












A final bit of sheer scraping.











Sanding with Portugese sand paper.










Paul invited everyone up to feel the surface before he started the hollowing.










This was a pretty cool tip - Paul uses CA glue to seal the exterior surface. He said it prevents water loss from cracking the surface. He used a small plastic bag to spread the glue around.









A bit of accelerator finishes the job.










Now the bulk of the interior is removed.











Paul uses homemade tools for hollowing. This one gets in to the tight area between the opening and shoulder of the vessel.










Everyone was pretty focused on watching those shavings come out of the vessel. We have a big screen and an LCD projector hooked up to the digital video camera. All the details are easily seen from throughout the room.







Caliper check for the wall thickness. Paul took the thickness down to a point where his next step could be done - using a fiber optic light to refine the wall thickness.








This technique is more easily done in a darkened room. However, there is one light fixture that never turns off in this demo room. Don helped out by shading the turning with an umbrella.








The fiber optic light goes into the vessel along side the tool. When the wall is sufficiently thin, the light glows from the interior and you can see any thickenings in the wall. The idea is to have the light pretty much uniform, which should give a consistent wall thickness.






After the hollowing is finished, the opening is refined.










The CA glue is sanded off with the lathe turned off.











Barbara started the hot dogs as Paul was in the final stages of making this vessel.
















The tail stock is brought up to stabilize the vessel while the foot is refined.










Details, details, details - it helps to see what you're doing.









After the foot is shaped, the wood is removed to a small spindle that can be cut off after the piece is removed from the lathe.









Almost there.










The top is jam chucked so that the bottom can be finished. The live center is placed on the end of the nub and the vessel is centered before turning resumes.










The foot should have a slightly concave surface.










The vessel is secured into the jam chuck with tape. The tailstock is removed so that the finishing touches can be done to the foot.









A bit of fine tuning the concave shape.












A few concentric circles, strategically placed, and then final sanding.










All done except for taking it off the lathe.










Yes, that jam chuck was a roll of duct tape placed on a four-jaw chuck.











Perfect timing - lunch is served. Part II of this day will cover the afternoon session.

EEOB Birding Trip 5 for 2007-2008

We had a fantastic day of birding last Sunday, April 27th. We started out at Greenlawn Cemetery, which is a birding hotspot for central Ohio. We weren't disappointed. We saw nearly 50 species of birds in just a couple of hours of strolling around to the habitats where most of the action occurs.





We first walked from the visitors center to the "pit" via a meadow path. The bees were working hard to gather pollen from the apple trees.








I was intrigued by this old maple that is regenerating from a huge stump. That diameter must be about 8 feet or so.



















This European ornamental beech is a fantastic specimen. The trees at Greenlawn are stunning, and there is so much variety that is not surprising that this large cemetery is a birding hotspot.













One of the nice finds for the day was this purple finch. We don't have them around here very often. Mike Flynn, our leader for the day, said that it's been four years or so since he last seen them around here.













We enjoyed watching three Orchard Orioles working the buds of this tree. There were two adults and a subadult sticking pretty close together.









Another nice spot of the day - a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

















This intimidating looking thing is a snapping turtle. What a view! I'll take a bird AHV anyday over this one.









Male cowbird - not my favorite species of bird as they are nest parasites.










Downy woodpecker trying to get her turn at the suet cake.









After Greenlawn, a few of us avid birders carried on to Slate Run for some different habitat. I hadn't been to this Metro park before, but I'll definitely go back. Aside from the ticks, it was a lovely set of wetland habitats and there were another 50 or so species of birds to be found there during the afternoon.








This gander was keeping a careful watch on us and even came out to try to intimidate us to stay away from his mate.










She was sitting on a clutch of eggs and was also keeping a careful eye on us.









There were a lot of eastern blue bird boxes scattered around the park, but the tree swallows seemed to be in control of them.

Birds at Highbanks

April 13th trip to Highbanks Metro Park. We were going to join the Columbus Audubon outing that afternoon in the rain. We thought there would only be a couple of people there, but we were wrong -- a couple of dozen showed up. We didn't stick around for most of the walk since I was still pretty tired from the 2 am arrival time that morning. I did take some photos from the feeder area.





There were a lot of different woodpeckers around the feeders, including this cute Downy.

















Chipping Sparrow













Another Downy Woodpecker

















Field Sparrow











Red-bellied Woodpecker













White-breasted nuthatch
















Tufted Titmouse











Another view

Quick Denver trip last weekend

I flew to Denver, Colorado April 10th, and back home again on the 12th (well, actually, because of flight delays I arrived home at 2:30 am on the 13th). We had been having beautiful springtime weather in Ohio, but there was a bit of snow that had just fallen in Colorado - 8 inches in some areas. This is the view I had at the hotel where I stayed for the two nights I was in town.









Friday morning was for a quick trip to the Denver Botanic Garden to pull some specimens of Penstemon and representatives of Scrophulariaceae s.l. for some workshops I would be leading the next day for the Colorado Native Plant Society.

I had not been here before, and so it was fun to see the place.





It's a relatively new facility and it looked very modern. There were hundreds of school kids arriving as we finished the work in the herbarium.







Here's a view of the atrium area of the building.

I gave a talk at University of Colorado, Denver for the biology department at noon and then met with faculty and students for the rest of the afternoon. My host was Leo Bruederle, and he brought me in to visit with his students who are working on Penstemon.


My workshops were scheduled to start at 9 am on Saturday. Leo is an early riser and I was on east coast time, so we organized to meet very early so we could go do some birding at Cherry Creek State Park. The first bird of the day was a life bird for me - Western Meadowlark. I know I've seen this species when I was a kid growing up in Oregon, but I wasn't keeping a list back then.

The song is similar, but distinctly different from the Eastern Meadowlark (pic posted a couple of weeks ago).




AHV alert!


This was the start of an interesting display behavior that began when I approached too near this Killdeer. It might have been near its nest, but I couldn't tell for sure.






The bird fanned its tail feathers and wagged its tail for several minutes.










It pretty much kept its back to me the entire time.











After a few minutes, it quit doing that behavior and then just kept its eye on me. I always thought killdeers were rather plain, but in their fresh plumage I think they are very pretty.








The reservoir was chock full of aquatic fowl, including white pelican, hooded merganser (shown here), western grebe, pied-bill grebe, American coot, Canada goose, mallards, and California gulls.








This gull was all tangled up in fishing line. I felt pretty bad for it.











Here's a juvenile California gull.











American White Pelican. I have no idea why that growth is on the upper bill - most of the pelicans looked like this.











Lots of American coots were on the water.









I did two workshops for CONPS - one on the break up of Scrophulariaceae, and a second one on my Penstemon research.

L to R: Leo Bruederle, Lorain Yeats, Carol English.

Look's who's coming for breakfast

I've been pretty busy all this month, but I found a couple of minutes to start processing some pictures I took Apr 2, 2008. There was a juvenile Cooper's Hawk scoping out our backyard feeders.

We feed a nice variety of birds (cardinals, house finches, goldfinches, song sparrows, yellow-throated sparrows, Eastern Towhee, grackles, blue jays, red-bellied woodpecker, downy woodpecker, northern flicker, mourning dove, robins, carolina wren, and many more). We noticed this winter that we're also feeding Cooper's hawks - one snatched a goldfinch from the feeder only about four feet from where I was watching.





Two additional views:

I can't resist posting this one.

AAW Sphere Project

This is my contribution to the AAW sphere exhibit. All photos are by Jerry Anthony.

The title of the piece is a quote from Lao Tzu:

"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be."

I think this quote encompasses the idea I had to make my sphere resemble an imaginary propagule of some sort.



Redwood burl, 4.5 inches diameter










Detail picture.

The entire project, post lathe, was carved using my NSK-Z500. What a gem of a tool!

Glacier Ridge Meadowlarks

The last day of spring break was Easter Sunday. We took Emma for a walk and did some casual birding. It was cold and windy and very late in the day, but I wanted to test some different camera settings to see if I could get a better focus at long distance.

By avoiding the convenient presets and setting my AF to one specific dot, I was able to improve the focus quite a bit - especially on things that aren't moving. I also changed the ISO from 100 to 400 for the low light conditions.




We saw and heard about 10 Eastern Meadowlarks toward the end of our walk. They were hard to spot unless they were facing us, but this fellow gave us quite a show.








He was quite a long ways away, but I was able to get a focused picture. The meadowlarks perch on a little tussock of grass and sing a beautiful melody.








You can see how hard it would be to find this against the grass unless he's facing you.









There were a lot of red-winged blackbirds singing around the park, also.

Their epaulettes are very bright right now.

Birding at Hoover Reservoir

Spring break is ending today, and I enjoyed taking some time off from my office. I spent the week recovering from a very busy winter quarter, and I enjoyed doing activities other than teaching, grading, and lecture prep. The weather hasn't been particularly nice, but at least I had some time at home. On Friday afternoon, after Steve got off work, the weather looked a bit nicer, and so Steve, Meghan and I hopped in the car to go up to Hoover Reservoir to check out the birds. Someone had been reporting a red-throated loon, and that was enough of an excuse to get out and see what was on the lake. We didn't see the red-throated, but I did score a new life bird from spotting a pair of common loons by the dam. They were too far away to photograph, but we had a beautiful view of them in our scope.




There were a lot of gulls at the reservoir - Bonaparte's, as shown here and in the next couple of pics, and ring-billed.













































We saw a lot of horned grebes, red-breasted mergansers, hooded mergansers, coots, ring-necked ducks, lesser scaups, pied-billed grebes, and canada geese, plus a few bufflehead ducks near the dam.

This horned grebe was grappling with a fish that looked way too big for it to swallow, but it did eventually get it down.






The fish looked to be larger than the grebe's mouth and throat.











It made me wonder how often these birds eat fish of this size, and how often do they eat? It seems as is this fish would provide enough food for a day, but I don't think that's the way it works.









Meghan wasn't interested in birds, but she did enjoy the scenery. She took a lot of photos with her digital camera.









We've had a lot of rain and snow recently, and big floods in southern and western Ohio. I don't recall seeing this much water over the spillway in the past several years.







After our stop at the dam, we drove up to Oxbow Road - another favorite birding spot for seeing waterfowl. At this location we saw a flock of 100+ red-breasted mergansers. They were kind of far off in the water, so my pics aren't very good, but you can see the field marks pretty well.







I enjoyed watching them take off for flight. They run across the water before getting enough momentum to fly.








There was a lot of courtship going on out there on the water, also.










Here was the second life bird on my list from this trip: Greater Scaup. I think I've probably seen these before, but I always error on the side of caution and call them lesser scaup. However, the field marks here are pretty clear - much more rounded head as compared to the lesser scaup, very white sides, and robust bill. Lesser Scaup have more of a peak on their crowns, and their sides are more grayish white than bright white.