Basket Mold

Here’s my latest woodturning project.

First, here’s what I was trying to do. This picture was taken at the end of August at a native American basket sale and demo at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village:

These are forms for making baskets around. They’re smaller at the top than in the middle — so how do you get the form out of the finished basket that fits tight around them? Look at the one in the top of the picture, and you can see that it’s not a single piece of wood, but multiple pieces held together by a string around the middle. The central block of wood, the one with the handle, pulls out of the form when the basket’s finished, and then the whole form falls apart and the other pieces will fall right out.

Looking at the baskets at that sale, I knew I’d never develop the skill to make them. But maybe I could learn enough woodturning to make basket molds. So I thought I’d try. Unfortunately, I wasn’t looking at the picture when I started, but I did remember the basic idea.

The weekend before last (Oct 10, I guess) I cut a piece of scrap 2 x 6 into a square cross-section piece and two smaller pieces of the same thickness, and two pieces of scrap pine that we had bought at the Hancock Bargain Barn in a bag of kindling into four 3 x 3/4 strips. I planed and sanded them all smooth and glued them up into one piece to turn. The secret to getting it apart, according to something I had read on the rec.crafts.woodturning newsgroup, is to glue a piece of paper between each two pieces of wood that are going together. I had never tried that, and wasn’t sure that my block wouldn’t either fly apart in the lathe or not split properly. I used some newspaper and Elmer’s white glue, and crossed my fingers.

It didn’t fly apart, but turned down fine. Here’s what it looked like late Sunday Oct 11 (appropriate Maine magazine for scale):

Then I emailed my basketmaker contact, including that photo, and asked if she wanted it and had any suggestions. She did, but I may not have understood properly. I think, looking at the picture on top, that I should have made the knob on top smaller. At any rate, I did cut a little more out around the top, cut a groove in the middle so you can put a string or elastic around it while using it, rounded off the bottom a little, and cut it off the turning block.

Then I took a deep breath, place a chisel very carefully right along one newspaper glue line, and tapped several times with a mallet. Voila! The newspaper split right down the middle. You’re looking at one piece of newspaper from the middle of the sheet here!

If you look carefully at the bottom of the mold, you can see some letters I wrote on it. That’s so you can match A to A, B to B, and put it all together the way it was before I split it — because the pieces opposite each other are undoubtedly not exactly the same size, and it won’t be smooth and symmetrical if it goes together in a different order.

Now I had some confidence that it was all going to split apart properly. The remaining chisel taps still needed to be done carefully, but I wasn’t worried. Here are the seven pieces separated properly. I sanded them all to get rid of some of the newspaper and make sure they were smooth.

… and by now it’s on it’s way to Hampden, Maine. Maybe with some critiquing and practice I’ll be able to make these well enough to trade five or six for one basket — I think that’s about the ratio of time for making things.