Slide of the Month June - Celtic Knot

May 2017

Time to set up: 5 days

Time to turn: 45 minutes

Finishing: 2 hours

Designs from: Dan Lecocq

Youtube:  Celtic Knot Pen









Inspired by another hobby, I thought turning a 4 ring Celtic Knot would make a great slide. I made the slide from red maple, white maple, and black walnut and turned it on a lathe. While I would suggest watching the youtube video for the setup, I'll try to describe it here.

I cut a piece of red maple 1.5 x 1.5 x 4 inches as the base wood of the slide. Next I cut some thin pieces of white maple (about 1/16 inch thick) and black walnut (about 1/8 inch thick). I glued the thin strips together, white maple- black walnut-white maple, with some wood glue, clamped the whole length of the sandwiched wood and let it dry overnight. The next day I cut the sandwiched wood 1.5 inch strips. Going back to the red maple, I next labeled each side, with a pencil, the first side with a 1, 2 on the opposite side, 3 to the right side of the first side, and 4 to the left side of the first side. Setting up my table saw with a 30 degree tilt and fence at 1 inch from the blade. The height of the blade was set so the was just a 1/4 inch left after the cut. I moved the fence just a bit so the slot was the width of the sandwiched wood. Using some wood glue, I glued the sandwiched wood into the slot, cut off the excess, clamped and left it overnight to dry. The following day I repeated the cut, gluing, and clamping on side 2. The process was repeated for sides 3 and 4. Twenty-four hours after the final glue up, its time to turn the slide.

While it looks very square and nothing like interconnecting rings, rounding the piece brought the rings out in wonderful spender. When I got the piece to the diameter I wanted, I cut a V cut on ether side of the finish length (approximately 2 inches).  Still on the lathe, I sanded the piece down using some very fine sandpaper. Using a finishing method I learned from pen making, I applied several layers of super glue wet sanding between layers.

Removing it from the lathe, I drilled a 3/4 inch hole down the length of the piece and then carefully cut the slide to size using the V cuts as a guide. Finally I coated the inside of the slide with additional super glue.