Woodworker's Journal 2010-34-2, страница 16

Shop Talk

Maple, whether fiddleback as in Flower Drum Song (top of page) or spalted as in Landscape Heft) is one of Denises favorite woods to work with.

on a track for use in Constructing her handbags. "You've got to be able to rout a shape that's roundish but not round and has nice, clean lines," she said.

Denise herself is not a purse person. "I am the last kind of person you would think about when you think about handbags," she said, with her focus being more oil the functional than a fashion collection. As an art piece, though, "1 think about handbags as a metaphor. What is it a woman brings with her? What is it she leaves behind? Few things are more connected to a woman than her handbag. W hat does a woman carry?"

None of the handbags she makes exceeds 12 inches in diameter, and her source for many of those 12" pieces of wood is cutoffs from instrument companies. Like the wood used in

16 April 2010 Woodworkers Jourruil

www.journal-plaza.net & www.freedowns.net

Woodturner Denise DeRose's previous specialty was bowls — including a 30" walnut one made with turner Michael Serpa.

Denise DeRose

a violin or guitar, handbag wood needs to be stable, and companies who sell billets for construction of lliose instruments often have cutoffs she purchases. "1 do a lot of glue-ups, or turn two discs and hollow and laminate them together," she said.

One reason Denise likes the fiddleback maple she often gets from the instrument cutoffs is because of the way it takes a finish. "A handbag finish is crucial. It's not something to just sit oil a shelf; it's in someone's hands all the time."

She likes to use fabric dye, in a variety of colors, on the wood for her handbags, and fiddleback maple lends itself well to dying because of its chatoyance. Her Flower Dm m Song bag, made from fiddleback maple dyed with red fabric dye with a lacquer finish, is one of her favorites: "It looks like wood and you can see that it's wood, and it's elegant and attractive."

Turns to Purses

W hen woodturner Denise DeRose saw a woman carrying a small bandsawn box, about the size of a paperback book, as a handbag, "a light went off in my brain: why couldn't it be a vessel? Woodturners make vessels. I started thinking about it, and I got consumed by it."

The first purses Denise made were canteen shaped, with a flat wood front and a channel for the strap inside the bag rather than outside. Lately, she's started experimenting with thenning, a traditional turning technique that's been used for centuries to turn multiple objects mounted parallel on a lathe. Denise is using the technique for clutch style purses: she turns the two flat sides of the bag using the therming technique, band saws the edges, then cuts the pieces in half lengthwise and hollows out the inside by hand or with a Forstner bit.

She's also working on figuring out a routing system

Turning to the Unexpected