A Pictorial study of the Process

Gluing the Segmented Rings

Here you can see the walnut spacers to be glued between the maple segments. Be sure to sand any frayed areas of the wood to ensure a clean glue-up.

I use Titebond II to glue the vase.

The rings are now being assembled with the aid metal adjustable pipe clamps. These clamps can be purchased  at Home Depot, Lowes, or at a plumping supply. I like to use these clamps because they cinch the segments up tightly. Again, the clamps are adjustable so you can adjust them to a variety of ring sizes.

One thing of importance:
Be sure that the segments form a tight fight as they form a complete circle. The segments need to fit tightly. I like to make test cuts of the segments on the mitre saw using scrap MDF or plywood. For example if I have a segment ring of 12 pieces...I'll cut 6 segments to form a semi-circle of 180 degrees and lay it flat on my table saw up against the rip fence. This way I can test the accuracy of the mitre cuts. The angles of the mitres will be either open at the top, open at the bottom, or a snug fit. I'm looking for the snug fit before I cut the material to be used on the vase. I use the Wixey digital protractor to align the blade angle on the mitre saw. In this case it was 15 degrees.

Starting the Vase Construction

To get started I used the plan from Woodturner Pro to dimension the maple and the cherry. The thickness is 3/4" and each strip of wood represents the material to be used for a specific ring.  As you can see the lengths and widths vary for each ring.



At the compound miter saw a stop block is clamped so that the vertical spacers can be cut. White oak is used in this instance and as you can see there is a 3/16'' crosscut section. The grain direction of the vase construction is all horizontal. The reason for this is to maintain stability of the glue joints while minimizing wood movement.

Ring segments are now being organized on the workbench. Each segment has a unique width and length so it is imperative to keep the segments for each ring seperate.