My mission is to reveal the inner beauty of wood with one-of-a-kind shapes that highlight natural characteristics often unseen.
About
Jeff Salter has been creating beautiful, hand-turned wooden pieces in his studio in Ann Arbor, MI since 1993. A woodworker since childhood, Jeff now turns artistic pieces for galleries and private collectors, and handcrafted drums for percussionists. Inspired by the natural grain patterns of each piece of wood, Jeff creates the optimum shape to expose the normally unseen inner beauty. He invites you to caress each piece to truly experience the wonder of these unique creations.
Jeff harvests most of his wood from the Midwest area, primarily from trees that have fallen from severe weather, natural causes, or land development. Raw wood is carefully selected for its unusual characteristics, turned to a rough shape, allowed to dry for 3-9 months, then re-turned to final dimensions and finished. The domestic wood he uses is often complimented with accents of exotic wood and finished with lacquer, or a combination of non-toxic oils and wax to create a one-of-a-kind composition. Pieces include bowls, boxes, urns, vessels, wall hangings, and spinning tops ranging from fingertip size up to 30” in diameter.
In addition to being a passionate woodturner, Jeff is also an educator and tool designer. He shares his knowledge with the woodturning community through one-on-one lessons, on-line teaching, and club demonstrations. He has done vendor booth demonstrations with Stubby-USA at several national AAW woodturning Symposia.
His professional work as an Optical Engineer informed the development of the “Easy-Tracker”, a new type hollowing guidance system employing a “Radial Centric” laser head to bring higher accuracy and ease of alignment to deep hollowing operations.
Most recently, Jeff is pursuing a new direction of his woodturning passion. By marrying his love for woodwork with his love of music and percussion, Jeff is now creating a line of one-of-a-kind, highly-desirable solid-shell drums customized for the discerning percussionist.
Spiraling Into Control
Join renowned woodturner and tool designer Jeff Salter, as he leads us on a journey of discovery through the world of spiral geometry. In this DVD, you will learn concepts and techniques that will help you stretch your imagination and realize new possibilities.
Jeff introduces a new way of creating helical spirals using his Cable Driven Spiral System. He moves from traditional methods of hand-layout and carving, to the demonstration of the Cable Driven Spiral System in three exciting applications: the fluted spiral, the mirrored interlocking spiral, and the most breathtaking of all, the open spiral.
Trailer
Scenes
$29.95
Outside USA
Solid-Shell Drum Set
To discerning percussionists, the solid-shell drum is considered the ultimate in resonance since the shell is stress-free and vibrates unconstrained by adhesives and glued seams.
The construction technique Jeff uses begins with a freshly harvested tree trunk. The wood is mounted to the lathe and concentric cylinders are cored out of the log and set aside to dry. The shells can take 6 months to a year to dry and during that time lose as much as 1” across the diameter. Once dry, Jeff remounts them on the lathe and cuts the shell to the finished diameter and wall thickness. The drum shell is finished with lacquer and hardware specified by the buyer. Drums are customized by wood-type, drum diameter and depth, and hardware selection. These unique pieces truly reflect the voice of their owners.
Hand making a true solid-shell drum set
Gallery
Spirals
Burls
Finials
Natural Edge
Morel
Vessels
Easy Tracker Laser Guidance
Deep-hollowing laser guidance has just gotten a whole lot easier. A simple flip of a lever and a turn of a dial is all the Easy-Tracker needs for fast accurate laser positioning.
Historically laser guidance systems have been nothing more than a “Laser-on-a-stick”. Their adjustment mechanisms are clumsy, have too many degrees of freedom and just about require three hands to manipulate. Worst of all, the alignment can only be performed after the cutter is removed from the turning.
The Easy-Tracker takes the guesswork out and puts the accuracy in.
Utilizing “Radial-Centric” technology, adjustments to the laser offset direction are made while the cutter is inside the turning. In fact the laser image itself “tells” you when you’ve achieved the correct alignment.
Special thanks to Don & Harriet Maloney for the use of their shop in Bluemont, VA.
