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Exquisite containers...with a twist!

19 Jun '14

Lessons from a Kassod Tree

Posted by Lanchi Vo

Pheasant Wood (Senna siamea) is an interesting timber from the tropic. Here, it is occasionally available from Hawaiian specialty wood vendors. It got it's name due to the shimmering grain that look like pheasant feather.

I have never seen a pheasant up close, so I don't know how good is the resemblance.  The pattern of this wood is, nevertheless, pleasing. 

The tree is also known as Kassod, a beautiful ornamental with panicles of bright yellow flowers. There was a nice Kassod tree in the front yard of my childhood house. I used to hate it because of an unfortunate incident. 

This was what happened: My auntie brought a small Kassod tree home one day, cleared out the flower bed and planted it there. She did not realize that amongst the things she cleared out of that bed was my beloved tomato plant. 

I was so proud of that tomato plant. It was the very first thing that I had ever planted.  It already had four flower buds...and I was six years old...     

Of course, I cried buckets when I saw what happened. My auntie felt so sorry, she went out under the heavy rain, dug out the tattered tomato from a pile of trash and tried to re-plant it in a pot. But it was too late. Oh, I still remember that sense of helplessness while facing the irreversible. 

So, I held a grudge against the Kassod. I secretly nipped off a few of it's young shoots, cut off some flower buds, ripped off its leaves...without realizing that I just helped it grew stronger and bushier with my "pruning". A few months later, I forgave the tree. My six years old heart wasn't yet robust enough to hold a heavy grudge for long. 

By the time I left that house, the tree was way taller than I was, covered with blooms most of the time. From that Kassod tree, I learned my first lessons about loss, resentment, revenge, and forgiveness.

 Pheasantwood bowl

09 May '14

Dreaming of Spirals

Posted by Lanchi Vo

This is an account of my wood threading saga.

As mentioned elsewhere, I started by turning chopsticks, then things gone wild. Pestles, garlic crushers, dishes, bowls, weed pots, hollow forms, lidded boxes... tumbled out of my lathe in succession... until I hit a speed bump. The obstacle was a simple toothpick holder. I made one for my mom, in the fashion of the slim boxes you see in my store, with a friction fitted cap.

But in the overpopulated, agitated and hostile environment within my mom's handbag, the holder's cap tended to fall off and spilled its gut. Engineering solution called for a more secure, threaded cap, so off I went trying to figure out how to cut spirals.

A researcher by training, it did not take me long to gather all the information about wood threading. I learned about jigs that claim to thread all kinds of wood in a jiffy, and the hand chasers, simple cutters with teeth that required a steep learning curve to master. Jigs sound easier, but they all look kinda clunky for a mini lathe, too big for my limited real estate, and too expensive for my limited bank account. With such a set of limitations, my viable option was to obtain the skills rather than procure the tools. Compared to those jigs, the simple hand chaser looked a lot more appealing.

So, how did I acquired the skill? I went to England, searched for the best Wood-Chasing Master, and apprenticed with him for five long years--like the martial art disciples in Chinese Kung Fu movies... Nahhh, just kidding! I jumped on the internet, searched for thread chasing, then followed the links. Blessed are those who teach on the Internet! Like learning how to bike, this wood threading business is easier than it sounds, but more difficult than it looks. You have to advance the tool at the right speed against the slowly rotating wood stock so that all the teeth fall into the same groove, chasing each other up the spiral. Sounds impossible, considering all the variables involved, but looks so easy watching the Master's demo.

So, I got the chasers, mounted an expensive boxwood block on the lathe, mumbled a sacrificial chant, and began cutting away. Several blocks later, I started to get it. Several months later, I passed the point-of-no-return and became a twisted spiral addict. "Stuck in a groove" took on a special meaning. It is such a satisfying feeling when the two threaded parts fit together smoothly!

Unlike the friction fitted lid, threaded parts just hold on to each other with minimum stress to the timber. The secured cap does add portability to the piece, as proven inside my mom's handbag--the on-going beta testing site. So far, so good...Until I hit a series of speed bumps.

This time, the obstacles are the timber themselves. There are only a hand full of woods that accept threading easily, most are expensive. But as a wood collector, I have more than a hand full, most are beautiful or rarely seen. It is such a waste if I limited my work to a few timbers, so I tried to thread everything: soft woods, porous woods, fibrous woods, and then all kinds of palm nuts. I tried stabilize the woods, tried straight cut, cross cut, angled cut, whichever way work. It's R&D all over again (the thing I used to do in my previous life). Pushing the envelope comes with reward and frustration. Sometimes, I spent the whole time in my workshop and had nothing to show at the end of the day. I went to bed frustrated, dreaming of spirals.

But when I look at the collection of exquisite threaded boxes that I bet you can not find elsewhere, it's all worth it. Up until now, I am still learning the art of wood chasing and enjoy it tremendously.

By the way, my shop logo isn't a self-portrait of me stooping over my lathe, despite the striking resemblance.

Those hands with fingers are actually my threading tools, an end-teethed one for the outer thread and the side-teethed one for cutting the inner. The logo also figuratively spells "LVo," my artist signature. It took me a few designing attempts to come up with such an elegant logo, impregnated with meaning...Well, I better stop right here, to prevent a self-inflicted bragging overdose!

18 Apr '14

The Coconut-Mango Magic

Posted by Lanchi Vo

When their hairs already turned white, their foot steps hesitated, my grandparents bought a house in Vung Tau, a quiet coastal city near Saigon. It was a house with a long front porch and a short garden strip on one side. There, my grandma planted a coconut and a mango tree. The neighbors commented: " It took a very long time for these trees to bear fruits, why bother to grow them at your age?". But grandma had her own agenda. In the southern Vietnamese pronunciation, "coconut" (dua) means "enough", and "mango" (xoai or xai) means "spend". These double meaning trees symbolized her wish to just have "enough to spend", in the spirit of "give us this day our daily bread".

 

 

It was during those hard years, post 1975, when there wasn't enough of anything to go around. Her wish was granted, plus a lot more. I was pretty sure. Since after a few years, the whole neighborhood, up and down the street, owed her money. During my summer vacations spent at their place, I witnessed how that happened. The gates of their house were never closed. During hot days, people quietly got themselves inside and slept under the front porch, where the cool tiles offered some relief, then quietly left. Once in awhile, they went inside. Young and old, they just dropped in, searched for my grandma, then spilled their marital complains, their financial troubles... she listened, she consoled, she advised, she "lent" money, knowing that they would not be able to pay her back. When nothing can be done, she cried with them.

 

 

I was just a small kid then, almost invisible to the grown-ups, so they did not mind me snooping around during these episodes. I observed, I listened, I remembered...and then I realized--many years later-- that my grandma was the richest person I had ever known--despite the fact that she had to sell off part of that house tin roof as scrap metal in order to survive, after she had nothing else to sell. Thanks to the coconut-mango magic, she was always rich enough to share, whether it's her time, money, or just rain water from her cistern. As a bonus, the trees did bear many seasons of fruit. A few years after my grandpa passed away, she sold the house and moved to Saigon with us, leaving these magical trees behind.


Later, we migrated with grandma to the US. One thing that pleased her tremendously about this new place was when she looked around, no one was poorer than us! As for my grandma, and also for my parents, they were never poor, they always knew how to count what they "Have". "Be thankful, it could be much worse", I was often told. When I want to start something but think it would take too long, or when I wish I could have a bit more of this and that, I think of grandma's trees.

Acorn from spalted mango with coconut palm cap

24 Mar '14

Chopsticks

Posted by Lanchi Vo

I wonder who first invent such an non-intuitive utensil called the chopsticks. A spoon I can understand. A fork I can totally understand, but the chopsticks...If you have ever tried to use a pair, you know what I mean.

On top of that comes even more arcane etiquette and the superstitions: hold the sticks at the upper half, far from the working end (that makes it even more difficult); don't stab your food with it; don't dip it in the common sauce bowl; never use just one chopstick under any circumstance; never use a mismatch pair; never stick the pairs upright in a bowl of rice; don't tap your bowl with the chopsticks; don't lay it across your bowl, unless you are done eating...and watch out for cross traffic. I mean, as if life weren't complicated enough!

I had a hard time as a kid learning to operate the chopsticks. It was a tricky business, but even more so because I am left-handed. I kept clanking chopsticks with my table neighbor, like we were having a duel! After a lot of splosh, splash, clunk, clank, I managed. I had to, because it was a matter of survival. 

Now, I am a chopsticks expert. And when you get up to that level, food would not taste as good with any other utensil, trust me. I suffer chopsticks withdrawal every time we forgot to pack it on camping or backpacking trip.

As mentioned elsewhere, chopsticks are the catalyst for my foray into wood turning. With my stash of timber and my faithful lathe, I can rest assure that I will never run out of chopsticks.