Finger Tops
Flushed with the success of the big spinning top I posted about yesterday, I decided to turn a bunch of little finger tops to give away as stocking-fillers.
They are made from sweet chestnut (it needs to be something dense otherwise the point gets squished the first time it spins off a table onto a hard floor). I deliberately experimented with different shapes and patterns. All of them work OK but some are harder to get spinning than others. After a bit of practice it is possible to get all five spinning at the same time. The colours are simply cheap wax crayon, mostly applied with the lathe spinning.
A few weeks later I made another, slightly bigger one from a piece of oak:
This one spun more stably and for longer than the first batch, probably because it's slightly heavier (sorry the photo is so blurry; I couldn't keep it in focus as it danced randomly around the table).
They are made from sweet chestnut (it needs to be something dense otherwise the point gets squished the first time it spins off a table onto a hard floor). I deliberately experimented with different shapes and patterns. All of them work OK but some are harder to get spinning than others. After a bit of practice it is possible to get all five spinning at the same time. The colours are simply cheap wax crayon, mostly applied with the lathe spinning.
A few weeks later I made another, slightly bigger one from a piece of oak:
This one spun more stably and for longer than the first batch, probably because it's slightly heavier (sorry the photo is so blurry; I couldn't keep it in focus as it danced randomly around the table).
Comments