As the first Megalith were coming out of my shop the comments by my wife and a friend gave birth to two Megalith variants, the Helix and the smaller Helix.
My wife gets to see just about all tampers that I make as they are laying about the house being sanded or photographed. And, as spouses are want to do, they make comments. My wife’s comments are always quite welcome as she has a good eye. At about the same time a friend/customer who saw the first Megaliths (and now owns more than a few) made a comment about spirals. Those comments got my wheels turning.
Spirals are extremely popular. And while they by no means make up the majority of my work (not even close) they are always in great demand. I will admit that I really enjoy doing spirals, but my one requirement is that each be different from any other. From what I understand there is even a technique/tool for doing a spiral on a lathe, but that for me would completely defeat the purpose. I require each spiral to be exactly like no other, the more variance the better. I avoid perfectly symmetrical pieces like the plague. I have found so many ways to alter and change spirals so that each is unique. Sometimes it’s the number of grooves or the pitch of the spiral. I the single most basic variable to tweak is the base shape, or platform, to which the spiral is applied. In this case it was a variation of the Monolith; the Megalith.
The Monolith has been a very popular shape. Recently it led to the Megalith which features a more steeply slanted top (although technically the Megalith may have actually preceded the Monolith). Over the years I have thought about applying a spiral to the Monolith shape, but with the less steeply slanted top it never seemed to work. Now with the Megalith, with it’s steeply slanted top, the time is right. That slant offers the key to morphing the spiral into the top contour. The two top tampers that you see above (not yet sanded) are the first of the Megalith Helix. These two are four groove tampers. Three groove pieces are also in the works.
Then there was my wife’s suggestion as to doing a smaller version of the Megalith. The Megalith has an overall length of around five inches. It’s a good sized tamper. For those wanting a pocket piece a shorter tamper would be a great idea. But, there was a problem with that.
If you look at the bottom left photo of the blue tamper (Joss) you will see a shorter version of the Megalith, somewhere around 4.2 inches long. While it’s certainly not an ugly tamper it does lack the dramatic flare of the Megalith. With the loss in length the proportions of the tamper have to change, and as it turns out the shape loses the aspect that makes the full size Megalith shape so fun. The overall piece is thinner, which is good in terms of function, but the dramatic taper is almost entirely lost. I kind of suspected this result, but all was not lost.
It was about the same time as the Megalith Helix was in development that I had a need to do something to breath life into the smaller Megalith in Joss. As it turned out, the spiral of the Helix provided the answer. Being narrow the piece would be pretty darned crowded with a four groove spiral, so I developed this variant around a three groove spiral, a shape that I find to be very appealing. Being a more wide open spiral the shape now has a very different look with a slow turning spiral and a very graceful shape. Here is yet another way to tweak spirals to keep them unique and never boring.
So, as work goes on with the Megalith Helix I am already seeing an evolution of the shape developing very rapidly as I tweak the spiral and develop the morphing of the spiral into the slanted top.
Stay tuned for more and more.