Wood Turning: The King

Remember last year when I learned woodturning? I was going to make a chess set for my final project but that didn't pan out. I did, however, get myself a birch dowel (1-1/8 in by 3 ft) from Woodcraft for $7.99 and a metric measuring tape. Why metric? Because the design I found for my chess piece was from the UK.

Specially, from Ridgeway Woodcraft.

Given that I'm about to graduate and I had a couple of free days after finals, I decided to put my wood turning skills to the test.

The original dowel

The blank, measured to 100mm.

Up on the lathe. I'm still not convinced this was on straight. 

Straight cuts are the easiest. So good, so far.

Here's where things got weird. I didn't have a tool that was 3mm in width so I guessed at the angles and the smaller diameter rings.

Frankly, I'm surprised the dowel didn't break at the thin points. I shaved down the angled parts and the ring that will become the cross. Part of the cross snapped off (you can see the middle ring isn't circular) but that didn't matter.

The middle ring was cut with the bandsaw on two sides to form the cross. I then sanded down the top and bottom edges. 

My piece isn't, strictly speaking, straight - I'm bad on both the bandsaw and the sander. I do like my king, though, and I'm glad I took the two hours to work on this project.