Mary Ostler

Goofing around in the work shop the other day.  I have been thinking about trying to turn a Japanese oval turned Inro. This turned out to be one of the more difficult things I have made. Trying to juggle drill bits of different sizes for different cuts just got confusing after a while.

An Inro is a small container that has multiple compartments that hang down from an Obi.

Tied together with a shoe laces. I have since replace the lace with a simple black, white & green kumihimo braid.

Marking out the three different pivot points on the blank. The two outer holes are to far out for a nice rectangle.  Moved them closer to the center.

Turning the whole blank to the appropriate thickness.

Installing the blank on one of the outer pivot points.

I love this image. You get to see just how offside the blank is. The solid center is  a few mm. wider than a twoonie.

One half of the inro has been turned.

Both sides now being turned. We reset the pivot points to the center.  The size of the compartments are marked out, and then the lip that fits into the  underside of the compartments are turned down to the right size.

The whole blank is taken of the lathe, the sections are cut apart, and with careful placing of a measure template, the holes for the compartments, and lace runner are drilled. These smaller sections are then chucked onto the lathe to turn the underside of the compartments. The section it fits into is often checked against this hole to make sure its a snug fit.

I ended up drilling through the top section of the Inro. To fix this I ended up making a button plug for the top surface.

This was a challenging piece to make off the top of your head. I may in the future do another, as it was good mental turning kung fu exercise.