Tea Light Candle Holder on a Wood Lathe

First and foremost - this Instructable is more or less an adaptation of a turning project posted by Carl Jacobson on his YouTube channel. If you're interested in wood turning, I highly recommend checking out his work. I spend a pretty embarrassing amount of my time watching wood turning videos online, and his are some of the best I've seen.

Here's the video from Carl's channel that I worked off of to plan and turn my own tea light candle holder. If you want to make one of your own, you can probably stop reading now and just watch the video.

Still reading? Ok. My main objective for this project was to learn to use a chuck on the lathe and to try some inside chisel work (on the spice jars I made, I mounted using a waste block and used forstner bits to do the hollowing). Success on both counts.

Total time planning, scratching my head, and drinking coffee = approximately six hours
Total time on the lathe = probably an hour

This relatively quick and easy turning project yields a candle holder that I think is pretty and professional looking enough to make people think your way more of an expert wood turner than you really are, which is cool.

I made it at TechShop
www.techshop.ws

The materials I used...

- a 5X5X3 block of osage orange I payed something like $14 for at Rockwell (looking to find a better source for stock material on future turning projects)
- large size tea light candles from IKEA. (diameter = 2 1/4'', 9 hour burn time)
- pharmaceutical mineral oil (from Walgreens)
- clear paste wax (Treewax brand)
- sandpaper up to 600 grit
- paper towels

The equipment I used...

- Bandsaw (Tech Shop's)
- Powermatic 4224B Wood Lathe (TS's)
- Barracuda 2 Key Chuck System (TS's)
- Harbor Freight Chisel Set (TS's)
- Robert Sorby 3/8'' Bowl Gouge (my very own)

Before I started turning, I marked the center of my stock and used the band saw too cut it down to an octagon. Osage orange is pretty dense and tough, so cutting through 3 inches of it was pretty gnarly. No problems, just had to take it slow.

I mounted my now octagon shaped hunk of wood between centers and went to town with a large roughing gouge. Again, osage orange = dense wood, so I took it slow. Once I had a nice even cylindrical shape, I took it off the lathe to see how much material I had to work with. The proportions of my stock seemed a bit different from what Carl Jacobson works with in the video I was using as my guide, so to figure out the necessary adjustments and finalize my design I laid the candle on my roughed out cylinder and stared at it for a while.

I couldn't get over the color of these wood chips. I was disappointed to discover they do not smell citrusy. A little wikipedia research, and I now know that osage oranges are not closely related to oranges at all.

I wanted to use a chuck to hold my workpiece from one end, allowing me to hollow out a spot for the candle, so I needed to cut a foot on what would become the bottom of the candle holder. I don't have any notes for this step, but I'm pretty sure the chuck called for something like a 2'' diameter foot. I formed the foot so that it was slightly more narrow where the foot meets the cylinder because I read or saw somewhere that doing so gives the chuck a better grip.

The chuck was pretty intuitive to use. I placed the foot into the jaws, then tightened them by using the tightening levers to rotate the two collars (not sure that's the technical term) in opposing directions.

(maybe just look at the pictures, but i'll do my best to explain below)

I used a roughing gouge and scraper to round off the corners on the top of the candle holder. I made the hollow for the candle by starting with the bowl gouge, then flatting the sides and bottom of the hole with a scraper.

At some point I had a catch, putting a large gash in my nascent candle holder and sending it flying out of the chuck. After wiping my brow, I got back to work and smoothed out the spot where my chisel caught. I think doing so actually improved the shape of candle holder. I rounded out the shape all the way down to around the bottom of the candle holder.

I finished the top before shaping the bottom. I sanded from 220 up to 600 with a mix of clear paste wax and mineral oil in equal part. Between grits, I used paper towels while the lathe was running to wipe away the gunky mixture of wood dust, wax, and oil. The paper towels also are good for buffing up the finish once you're done sanding.

To work on the bottom, I mounted the candle holder on the chuck by placing the jaws inside the hollow for the candle and expanding them. This didn't mar the hollow for the candle, and if it had it would be hidden anyway.

I shaped the bottom so that is slightly concave and sits on it's outside edge. This shape makes the candle holder nice and stable, and I think it gives it a nice feel in your hands. Sanding and finishing procedure was the same as for the top.

I have a tendency to want to laser cut/engrave everything (this seems to be a common affliction at Tech Shop). So, done turning for the day, I applied finish to one of my offcuts and experimented a little with laser engraving the material. For some reason I didn't take a picture of the results, but it worked pretty well. Even so, I didn't have any particularly inspiring design ideas, and I decided to leave the candle holder with a natural look... at least for now.

Burning candles in your house will make you a classy person. It's true! My tea light candle holder now sits in a prominent position on my living room coffee table and has gotten lots of love from visitors in my home.

I made it at TechShop
www.techshop.ws

And again, props to Carl Jacobson for this design!