Jim Kephart Woodturning Gallery
The following are categories of photos corresponding to the types of work I do. Most items are customers' designs or reproduction of broken, maimed or missing turnings. Most items do not directly reflect my design sense, only my ability to make whatever walks into the shop.
Home » Architectural Elements 
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Balusters
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I do a lot of balusters. It seems families tend to break a few of them before the children get house broken.
Some are for indoor, some are for outdoor, some are for painting, some are for staining.
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Columns
- I do columns, most are reproductions or designs not available by mass production suppliers.
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Finials and applied knobs
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Finials can be part of furniture or can be architectural elements desending from beams or posted on top of newel posts. Others are used outside on fence posts.
There are also some architectural elements used in building cornices such as some of the knobs shown in one of my photos.Here are some of my finials.
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Newel posts
- The following are samples of newel posts I have made as reproductions of existing newels for restoration or remodeling. Others are for new construction.
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Split turnings
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Split turnings are used to make partial pieces such as a half of a newel post. These can be applied to something like split columns attached to a wall unit or a half newel post attached to the wall. A hand railing sometimes looks better integrated, if attached to half a newel mounted on a wall than just mounting it to the wall directly.
Split turnings have the advantage of being a true half of a turning instead of a turning sawn in half. A sawn turning will look flattened and unnatural since part of the turning has been cut away.A split turning is made by carefully gluing up (for example) 2 pieces of wood with paper between them. The resulting wood blank is turned on the lathe. When finished, the finished tuning is split using a wood chisel and a mallet. The wood chisel is placed in the middle of the paper joint. The mallet is driven into the joint and the paper splits evenly down the middle. Half the paper remains on each half of the turning. A favorite paper to use is the Sunday comics. When split they look like they were printed backwards.These are some examples of my split turnings.