Down under (milk) wood

Hi Geordie

You did a GREAT job , I like the look of the Milkwood almost looks like maple
Is it hardwood or soft ?

MilkWood
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alstonia#Description
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alstonia#Description

Bj

You may want to take a look at the bit below it's made for just the type of base/column you made. , no clamps needed,they work great. they do come with instructions but it works best if you make a jig to fit over the lathe and use a plunge router to put the dovetail in the base with a home made index jig to set it up and lock it in place.

Hi bobj3 and thanks for the reply. Sorry if the title of my post was misleading. I first put in "Down under wood" coming as I do from NZ. Then, probably because I'd had a beer or three, I thought I'd be smart and inserted "milk" to get "... under milk wood" (after Dylan Thomas - the Welsh poet & writer).

No, the wood is Kauri (Agathis Australis) and is a fairly hard straight close grained timber which is great to work on and off the lathe. It has beautiful orange/red flecks in the grain which unfortunately can't be seen in the photo. The Kauri is protected now and so is expensive but at one time the crown & stump woods were used for panelling and high-end furniture while the trunks were a favourite for ship's masts. The largest existing (Tane Mahouta - God of the Forest) has a girth of 13.3m and is 51m high (what's that - about 44' x 265').

Thanks Tom. To answer your questions, the feet are dowel jointed to the centre column (no screws or nails anywhere in the construction). I made a V groove in a piece of 4 x 4 using a bench saw and clamped the centre post into the groove which made it simple to drill the holes for the dowels on a drill press. To clamp the odd shaped feet while the glue was setting (this is going to be difficult to describe!) I put a quick release clamp across the foot so the bar of the clamp was bearing down on the outside face of the foot (with some padding between bar and foot to avoid marking the piece) then another clamp from the back of the centre column and bearing down on the bar of the clamp across the foot. Does that make sense? It was a bit Heath Robinson but it worked.
Since then, I've made myself a router jig which lets me rout the holes in turned pieces while still on the lathe using the lathe indexing head to lock the piece in place while I rout the dowel holes - much easier and more accurate and I can use the jig for fluting etc.