Creation of an Urn for Bill Zerby
Shortly after founding member, Bill Zerby, passed, his daughter, Rachael contacted me to request that I, or someone else in the club, create an urn to house Bill’s cremated remains until they can organize a trip to Lake Superior when he wished to be scattered. As I was not the only club member that Bill impacted, I inquired at the May meeting whether other members would like to participate in the creation of Bill’s urn. Several members indicated that they wished to participate. I had already been in discussions with Bill Kalb who was very close to Bill and met with him regularly over the last 20 years. The members who indicated that they wanted to participate held an impromptu meeting during the May meeting’s break.
As Bill’s favorite wood was Cocobolo, it was agreed that the urn should feature this wood species. Given the cost and availability of Cocobolo, it was not reasonable to obtain a single block of Cocobolo of sufficient size to turn an urn large enough to house Bill’s remains. We therefor decided that a segmented urn was the appropriate course of action, and we reached out to Ray Davis for guidance. He immediately offered his shop as the construction site, and we gladly accepted. Bill, Ray, and I.
Bill had learned that the urn would be needed prior to the 23rd of May, and Ray had a 10-day vacation planned in the remaining time, so it was decided that we needed to get the urn made as soon as possible to have it completed prior to Ray’s vacation. Due to the now-contracted timeframe we were working with, it was not possible to bring in everyone that had indicated they wanted to help. My sincerest apologies to those affected. We contacted Ann, Bill’s wife, to arrange a time to meet with her to get her input and preferences of the urn’s construction and materials.
We drew-up a starting design in Segment Pro so that Ann would have something to reference, and we headed over to visit with Ann. We decided that we would construct a simple feature-ring urn in which the feature ring and accent rings would be Cocobolo alternating with Curley Maple and a Cherry main body. Ann put Bill’s wood collection at our disposal, and we selected sufficient Cocobolo from his stash. Bill Kalb already had sufficient Curley Maple from Zerby’s stash, and Ray had a Cherry board which completed our materials needs. This was on Monday following the club meeting. On Tuesday, we started on cutting the strips, segments, and glue ups. On day two, Wednesday, Bill was otherwise engaged, so Ray and I completed the construction and turning of the urn’s body. The top, made of Cocobolo, was glued up, but not yet turned. The photos of the urn on the lathe indicate where we stood at the end of Wednesday, day two.
On Thursday, Bill Kalb returned and the lid was completed after a few issues were overcome. Cocobolo is very oily and event after wiping down the segments with acetone to strip off the oils, wood glue is less than optimal. After reconstructing the lid, we recessed out a mortice to accommodate a blackwood disk that would serve as the base of the blackwood cross that Bill created.
At the end of Thursday, I took the urn home and completed the finishing with several coats of pure tung oil. We delivered the urn to Ann on Tuesday, May 19th.
