You could use paints and wood stains, but controlling them to get a natural look is difficult. Fortunately, there’s a way to create the graceful blending of a fine watercolor painting with the ease of filling in a coloring book. The trick is a two-step process using watercolor pencils.

What are Watercolor Pencils?

Watercolor pencils look and sharpen like any other colored art pencils, but they are water-soluble. Brush on water after coloring and the colors dissolve and flow into one another. They allow you to obtain the beauty of watercolor art with the ease of using a pencil.

Because the color goes on dry, it’s very simple to put exactly what color you want exactly where you want it. Once the water is added, the individual pencil marks go away and blur, and you get a soft pool of color that mimics nature.

Why watercolor pencils in particular? Most regular colored pencils contain wax or oils, which means they are more difficult to blend, and might not be compatible under some finishes. Watercolor pencils do not contain waxes or oils, so they flow readily and are Left to right: Pencil work, starting to blend with water, final result. compatible under almost all finishes once they are dry. You’ll find them at art supply stores. Good ones, which have softer, richer colored “lead,” are rather expensive but worth it.

Step-by-step

Make sure your wood is smoothly sanded. For very dense woods, like hard maple, you can apply the pencil directly to the raw wood. Softer woods, like poplar, will grab the color and absorb more of it into the pores. To gain more control, seal softer woods first by flooding on some thin dewaxed shellac, then wiping it all off immediately. That will seal the wood enough so the pencil doesn’t soak in too deeply, but it will still give you a surface that feels and works like raw wood.

You’ll find that with lighter colors, such as yellows, oranges and even some reds, you’ll need to color more intensely with the pencil than with darker greens, blues and browns. Use black only with caution, as it tends to muddy colors quickly.

Dipping the tip of the pencil in water will make it add more color, but may gum up the sharpener if you don’t wait until the pencil is dry before sharpening the tip.

Apply the colors any way you like, and overlap as much or as little as you choose, but once you start adding water it’s a good idea to work from lightest colors to darkest. The brush will pick up and transfer some of the color, and it’s easy to get your light areas too dark if you begin at the dark areas.

I like to use a small, wellformed brush, like a sable or watercolor brush rather than a big, soft oxhair mop. The fine end lets me blend as much or as little as I want by selectively putting more or less water in any given spot. Just flowing water over the whole thing leaves it a bit too much to chance. Try it on scrap and you’ll see what I mean.

A Few Ideas

Carvings are a natural, but if you don’t carve, simply start with an outline and color it in. Draw it yourself, find a nice laser cut pattern, or use an iron-on transfer.

Find a clip art line drawing online, resize it to fit your work, then print it onto iron-on transfer paper, which you can find at any office supply store. Lay it face-down on the wood, set an iron on the cotton setting, and press the image right onto the wood. Remember, the art will be a mirror image. If that matters, flip the image on your computer or printer before printing it onto the transfer paper.

One of the nice things you can do with pencils is create fake inlays of other woods right onto the wood itself. You’ll want to mask so that your artwork appears only where you want it, for instance as a stringer or pattern inlay. In these samples, I simply let them blend to the wood so you could see clearly how they were done.

Rosewood, for instance, has a surprising array of colors in it that blend into a much more subtle figure. With bird’s-eye maple, I was a bit more careful and dryer with the water so the bird’s-eyes would soften but not get obliterated.

Spalted wood requires at least one extra step. First, apply your background colors to create the puddles of hue. Then blend those with water and let the wood dry before you apply the black lines. You can leave them as is, soften them with water, or only soften some areas where the line gets thicker or less distinct.

Don’t be afraid to experiment. What you see here is just a jumping-off spot. There’s no limit to what you can create.

Topcoating

Once you are done with your artwork, seal it with shellac, varnish, Danish oil, lacquer or whatever you chose. Avoid water-based finish since a wet coat of it can flow the colors together more than you planned. If you must use water-based finish, seal the colored area first with dewaxed shellac.

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In my lifetime, I have witnessed some groundbreaking advances in sharpening of turning tools. In my boyhood, many turners sharpened their tools on oilstones, not owning a grinder at all. It was slow and fussy. Fortunately, my father’s shop had several grinders, but we did all of our grinding of turning tools freehand. As I have often stated, freehand sharpening is turning turned inside out: turning’s evil twin, so to speak.

Compounding matters, we only had carbon steel tools, which required constant quenching in water, or they overheated and lost their temper. (So did my father.)

In 1982, Jerry Glaser introduced the first turning tool sharpening jig, which separated turning from its evil twin. It positioned the turning tool perfectly against the grinding wheel so that the turner only had to sweep the edge smoothly against the wheel. There was a minimal learning curve and now anyone could sharpen a tool. Tim Clay based his Wolverine and Vari-Grind jigs on Glaser’s design.

With all this development, the only weak point in the system these days is the grinding wheels themselves. Grinding wheels are akin to pottery with sharp grinding particles mixed in. A new grinding wheel is not round and has to be trued once mounted on the grinder. I’ve addressed this previously in my video on bench grinders (below).

VIDEO: Sharpening Turning Tools with a Bench Grinder

CBN Wheels: The Next Step

Now we have the final step in the evolution of sharpening turning tools. It is cubic boron nitride grinding wheels — CBN for short. A CBN wheel differs greatly from a standard grinding wheel: it is a machined disk of metal, either steel or aluminum, that is coated with cubic boron nitride crystals. The resulting wheel is perfectly round because it was turned from metal, unbreakable (it cannot explode) and very well-balanced. Many are dynamically balanced; you will see drill holes on the side that bring the wheel into balance. The result is that the wheel runs absolutely true with no vibration whatsoever.

Boron nitride is a compound of boron and nitrogen with a chemical formula of BN. When its crystalline structure is cubic, its abrasive cutting qualities are analogs to diamonds. The only harder abrasive particle is diamonds, but CBN will hold its integrity at higher temperatures than diamonds. The really juicy plum in the CBN pudding is thermal conductivity. The most common material used in grinding wheels for tool sharpening is aluminum oxide, which is not a good thermal conductor. Because of this, 90% of the heat from grinding with aluminum oxide ends up in the workpiece. CBN is a good conductor of heat, so only 40% of the heat goes into the tool being ground. The rest goes into the wheel, which, being metal, is a good conductor of heat. Thermal properties are so good that there is very little sparking when grinding with CBM and the tool is usually cool enough to touch. Because of this superior thermal conductivity, CBN will dry grind tool steel where diamond wheels will be ruined if used dry.

Pros and Cons

There are some drawbacks to CBN wheels, the first being expense. The typical 6″ or 8″ wheel costs between $150 and $250. The other drawback is that they will only grind hardened tool steel: mild steel will ruin them. They really work best on high-speed steel but will do fine on carbon tool steel that is Rockwell C scale 55 or above. I feel the expense for even one wheel is justified by the fact that most people will never need to replace it and a good aluminum oxide wheel costs between $50 and $75 and wears out. A solid compromise is to keep a 46-grit aluminum oxide wheel on the left side of your grinder and mount an 80-grit CBN wheel on the right. Do your mild steel and rough tool grinding on the aluminum oxide and final tool grinding on the CBN.

Because there is no danger of the wheel exploding, you can mount CBN wheels at a higher level, giving better visual acuity. If you are also running an aluminum oxide wheel I would not do this, however.

Using CBN wheels is quite a different experience. There is no vibration, there is no shower of sparks and there is not even really loud noise. Only light pressure against the wheel is required. It is all very sedate, and the finished grind is performance art. On scrapers the burr is uniform, working as well as, or better than, one raised on an aluminum oxide wheel. I even grind carving tools on the 80-grit CBN without burning them.

The final problem with CBN wheels is that most will not fit inside the grinder’s guards. Most turners are simply removing all guarding on the side that has the CBN wheel. This may be OK because there is no danger of it exploding. Being cautious, I was able to use the guards on my 8″ Baldor by putting some washers between the two halves. This leaves a small opening but is still safer than no guards at all. It also allows me to use the rests that came with the grinder in addition to the Wolverine and Vari-Grind supports.

If you use a CBN wheel, you’ll appreciate the amazing quantum leap forward that it is.

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We got so many responses to that question that we couldn’t fit them all into the print magazine, so we’re sharing some more here.

A couple of things to remember:

1) Almost all of these uses were cited by multiple survey responders. However unique you think you are … you aren’t.

2) Woodworker’s Journal is not advocating these uses, merely reporting. For many of them, the sane advice would be: “Don’t try this at home!”

And now, to how survey respondents have used their cordless drills …

… the perfect accessory for any holiday.

“Winding Christmas lights”

“Carve a pumpkin”

“Spinning sparklers for kids on 4th of July”

… or a visual aid.

“As a flashlight when a screw I was drilling hit a live wire, tripped the breaker and inevitably I lost all basement lights”

“As a flashlight to find my keys in the dark”

“I have used the LED light to find an item in the bottom of my purse”

Pet supplies.

“Grinding my dog’s claws.”

“Using the light to play with the dog.”

“Scaring the cat.”

“Used a variable speed drill to massage my dog’s hip and comb his coat.”

Or kitchen supplies/cooking utensils/a way to liven up a party.

“Stirring chili at a BBQ”

“Mixing frozen orange juice”

“Took the handle off of a countertop snow cone maker and chucked the spindle for the ice shaver into my drill to crank out shaved ice quickly for a party”

“Peeling apples”

“Turn an ice cream freezer”

“Making mashed potatoes when mixer broke at Thanksgiving”

“Crushing grains for brewing beer”

“Making watermelon cooler drinks”

“Making whipped cream”

“Mix five-gallon batch of barbecue sauce”

“Peeling potatoes”

“Attaching a new toilet brush and filling a pail full of water, place muddy potatoes in the pail, then turn on the drill to scrub the spuds!”

“Stir cake mix at camp site”

“Shelling peas”

“Removing sweet corn kernels from the cob”

“Pull a cork out of a wine bottle”

“Mixing gingerbread for my wife. Mixer broke, put beater in the chuck. It worked great.”

In looking at the previous uses, and then looking at this next batch – thank goodness that the majority of woodworkers in our survey have more than one cordless drill. You do not want to know where that thing has been.

“Drilling small hole in toenail to relieve pressure after smashing toe with truck tire rim”

“Killing flies in my truck with a sponge wheel buffer. (RAID works better.)”

“Doctor. Used it in the OR.”

“Removing a large hairball from the bathroom sink drain”

“Drilling holes in deer skull mount”

“Using it to scrape a bird skin for taxidermy”

“Fleshing animal hides for tanning”

“Keeping an aerobic septic tank aerated during a six-day power outage”

Cordless drills also come seem to come in useful in the gardening and outdoor pursuits.

“Drilling holes for planting flower”

“Put in a paint mixer attachment to remove string algae from my pond”

“Power a take-up reel on a clothesline”

“Winding weed whacker line”

“Clean BBQ grates”

“Digging grass out of the sidewalk cracks”

Pursuing hobbies like fishing, or automotive restoration.

“Rewind my fishing line when reel broke — with fish on the line”

“Spinning monofilament for making fly-fishing leaders.”

“Polishing headlights on my car”

“Starting a car”

Or more playful pursuits.

“Blowing bubbles out of a large bubble maker”

“Helping my daughter build a catapult”

“Spinning wheels on a Pinewood Derby car”

“Start my remote control boat”

“Launching a toy helicopter”

“Winding up a huge ball of kite string”

“Flying a kite!”

“To power a rock tumbler”

“Cleaning gourds”

“Powering a lacrosse ball cleaner”

“Wind yarn for wife’s knitting”

“Power a go-cart my son made”

“Running a Van de Graaff generator for kid’s science project”

“A buddy and I once put a pencil in the end and tried to draw pictures”

“To spin a bicycle generator to test the lights on the bike because I had a short that was intermittent and I couldn’t pedal the bike and wiggle wires and bounce lights so it kept it spinning for me”

And just generally coming in handy.

“To advance the calendar on my watch”

“As a doorstop”

“Used one to step on so I could reach the extra two inches to get something out of the attic”

“My oldest is dedicated for cranking open the skylight”

“A crutch, to help this fat old man up off the floor”

In summary …

“What is unusual? I use them for any- and everything.”

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As for traditional grinding, Ernie Conover shows off some of the jigs he uses with his workshop grinder to keep his turning tools sharp, as well as how to use a buffing machine to create a razor edges.

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Devices to hand cut marquetry can be as simple as a board with a V-notch to a more elaborate and traditional marquetry chevalet (or donkey). The marquetry cutting table I used was made from a leftover piece of laminate countertop; 12” wide and 18” long.

Midway on the tabletop, cut a slot about 6” long. Drill a ½” hole, then countersink to accommodate a 1” outside diameter washer. Cut a slot in a 1” OD and epoxy the washer in place so that it is flush with the tabletop. A second 1” diameter hole can be used to hold the fret saw. A V-notch at the front makes it easier the slide the fret saw into to table.

The cutting table clamps to any tabletop surface using an F-Clamp. The base for the table was built up from three layers of ¾” plywood with an opening in the middle to accommodate the F-Clamp.

Download the drawing of Peter’s Fret Saw Cutting Table here.

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