Egg Stand

This egg stand was a gift for a friend in Japan. We've exchanged gifts a few times and they always have a natural flare to the type of gifts we exchange. My wife and I found this egg at a local shop that has some interesting local art that fits our tastes. The egg itself was created by a local artisan from pieces of driftwood and pieces found in the forest, all reclaimed. Unfortunately it didn't come with a wooden ring or other type stand and we only had about one day to get it ready to travel across the big pond in a suitcase.

It dawned on me when we got home that I had recently found a chunk of funky brass at the local salvage place that might work. After clean up I thought the size might work if I could create the concave shape in the top of it to support the egg steadily. I wanted the design to somewhat fit the eggs layered style but not distract from the artistry of the craftsman, which meant I needed to try some profiling and radius effects.

After cleanup I had about 1.125" diameter to work with. I started the convex section by center drilling this top surface then out to about .375 with an end mill and about half the depth. I tried to walk the insert tool with the compound and cross slide feeds and kept working back and forth, in and out and was able to get a rough shape but what I really wanted was a Venturi shape because of the wider base of the egg and some other projects I've had in mind. So I decided to grind something in a 5/16" HSS tool. I thought it would give me some flexibility with the manual feeds for the profile. Basically I created a radius that would give the ability to change the compound angle as I got further into the bore. Luckily brass is fairly forgiving and can be polished up. For a first attempt it followed the shape I wanted and fit the bottom of the egg well.

Then on to the side profiles. I wanted that layer effect and nice radii if I could. This was all on the fly and whittling where I thought I should. I used a radius tool bit ~1/8" in some places and insert and parting tools in others. The double cut base was to give it some weight and the chalice top was to help the eye follow the egg shape. I did use a couple of needle files in some places to smooth some of the transitions and up to about 600 grit before polishing. A trick I found a while back was using rouge directly on the part while turning the lathe at a decent speed then wiping with a lint free rag. The micro finish pads work pretty well too but found they still leave marks in brass. In this case I used Semi-Chrome on a rag to finish it off.

The bottom was basically just parted off, then faced off and lightly sanded. I did this because I wanted the rougher surface to not slide very much and because I chose not to glue felt on it thinking it might be a bit tippy with the weight of the egg.

Overall I only spent about 1.5 hours from git to go because we had to get it bubble wrapped and packaged for a long journey. I was pretty happy to actually do my first artsy profile and practice the Venturi shape for future projects. My wife was thrilled with it and our friend sent many thanks for the beautiful hand crafted gifts from our neck of the woods. Me, I love being able to salvage discarded bits and make something that pleases the eye and senses...Plus getting to use my Mini to do it is like icing the cake. ~¿@