Steven Kennard Turning Blackwood Boxes

Steven Kennard is not an easy man to pigeonhole. Born and raised in England, where for many years he built furniture and restored antiques, he also lived for nearly a decade in France, where he turned wood and took photographs. Now he and his Canadian-born wife, Ellie, live in Nova Scotia and work in a renovated barn on their property.
Kennards earliest woodworking included building sets for theatrical productions. Along the way he also built kitchens, French-polished pianos, and ran a successful business building portable tables for physical therapy and massage. In the late 1970s he bought a lathe so he could replace broken parts on antiques; within a few weeks he had turned his first box, and since then, he says, amidst the wide array of work hes done, one constant has been his passion for turning boxes.
These days, in addition to photography--a blend of fine art photos and shots of work by other artists and craftsmen--Kennard devotes much of his time to box turning. In this slide show, he talks about turning and presents several dozen of his remarkable boxes.

Kennards work was featured on the back cover of Fine Woodworking #220.






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Unisaw Quick Mid April Update

Only had a few moments to work on the saw during the last week or two - I did begin some sub-assemblies (front trunnion bracket) and painted the second coat on a few parts (feet, cranks, blade dust shield). Ive been messing with a couple of magnetic starters to use on the saw - these are all three phase so Ill be converting for use as single phase 220. So far Ive collected an old Allen Bradley, a Cutler Hammer and I may be purchasing a Square D just to make things interesting. More photos to come.

As usual, all the other stuff I do has been interfering - Ive also been working on a bird house (my woodworking club is having a little contest this morning during our regular Saturday meeting) and the yard. My current project is to dig out the space beneath the rear deck (by hand I might add - shovel load at a time), then wheelbarrow the dirt out to various areas in the yard that need filling (weve lost so many trees that there are somewhat dangerous holes all over my wooded lot). I also moved 8 tons of dirt (by hand once again) out at the rental property (thanks to my friend Allen who took pity on me and helped move about half of it) to back-fill the rear drain after the water-proofers were done coating the wall.

-- John

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Wood Carved Jhoola Indoor India Swing Bench

Done and ready for the next one

Close Up Finished Jhoola
I just finished making & carving this unique indoor India swing bench, for a customer, it is also known as the Oonjal or Jhoola. This type of swing bench is not readily available without an overseas order. These types’ of wooden carved swings were used by Kings in their palaces and were considered a sign of royalty and are still considered even today.
This type of furniture is a wooden swing with brass chains suspending it from the ceiling of the inside of their home. I glued together three planks of solid African mahogany for a 72” x 24” x 3” think size bench. I turned the feet on the lathe and I hand carved 18 floral ornaments along the outer edge. It took me about 4 ½ hours for each individual carving.

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