Shortly after I’d been turning for a little while, I really wanted to make these teardrop-shaped earrings and pendants. It was an easily-accessible way to start doing some segmented work – what I really wanted was a thin strip of walnut between two layers of maple.

One the blank was glued up, I mounted it in the smallest jaws of my chuck, turned one end round and reversed it:

A skew chisel cleans up the corners with ease:

After marking off the height of an earring, I begin shaping it:

A scraper on the end rounds out the bulb:

Since there will soon not be much wood supporting the piece, it’s best to sand the bulbous end now:

Finer work with the skew gets me closer to the shape I was looking for:

A little bit of sanding, finish, and then gluing in an eyelet to be attached to an earring:

Originally, I used a very fine drill bit in a pin vise to make a hole very near the size of the eyelet, glued in with CA glue (superglue). However, these had a relatively high failure rate. Instead, I now recommend making a small hook on the end to be glued in, a slightly large hole, and then 5-minute epoxy. The metal appears to be too slick, and glueing in a small hook gives the epoxy some purchase.

Here are some more that I made of that same vintage. These are made from some spalted pear wood that I got from a felled tree, and some wavy teak that I got from some free outdoor chairs:

I made a series of these with old maple floorboards and walnut, but the maple was dark enough that there was not very much contrast:

More walnut and maple, with a cherry accent in the middle: