I don’t know of anyone else using my approach to globe-making.  I use 24 thin strips of wood which are bent, then edge-glued together.  Seeing the final product, many people assume it must be solid and turned on a lathe, but it’s not. It’s hollow and very light, plus it maintains the 24 facets rather than being perfectly spherical.  The most distinctive thing about this technique is that the figured grain wraps all the way around the globe, a result of cutting all the staves sequentially from a single board of highly figured wood.

How did this idea come about?  After building my first musical instrument, a Renaissance lute (shown in the Instruments page of the web site), I became intrigued with the idea of building a wooden globe with similar techniques, but I soon found that the globe presented some special challenges.  First, the land areas must be cut, bent and glued to the ocean areas, a very time-consuming process.  Second, a closed shape, like a sphere, requires that the two halves fit precisely together.  Since the angles have to be very accurate and the wood is only 3/32″ thick, it’s a tricky thing to do.  After building my first globe of curly maple and wenge wood, I’ve gone on to build six others, experimenting with different materials and techniques.

It was a thrill to get a call from a set designer saying they were looking for a wooden globe for a commercial they were shooting for a TV show on NBC called Makin’ It, hosted by Nick Offerman and Amy Poehler.  Below is the commercial, which uses the first globe I created.  It made it even more special knowing that Nick Offerman is a passionate woodworker as well.

Also pictured here is a globe commissioned by HP as a presidential gift from Meg Whitman (HP CEO) to Mr. Mitarai (Canon President) commemorating the 30th anniversary of the HP/Canon collaboration on LaserJet printers.  The land area is made from wenge and the oceans from curly maple.

I’ve also included two curly maple globes.  One with land areas defined by crushed turquoise.  The other with latticework details for the oceans, making it possible to look through the globe to the back side.