Split turnings are used to make partial pieces such as a half of a newel post. These can be applied to something like split columns attached to a wall unit or a half newel post attached to the wall. A hand railing sometimes looks better integrated, if attached to half a newel mounted on a wall than just mounting it to the wall directly.
Split turnings have the advantage of being a true half of a turning instead of a turning sawn in half. A sawn turning will look flattened and unnatural since part of the turning has been cut away.
A split turning is made by carefully gluing up (for example) 2 pieces of wood with paper between them. The resulting wood blank is turned on the lathe. When finished, the finished tuning is split using a wood chisel and a mallet. The wood chisel is place in the middle of the paper joint. The mallet is driven into the joint and the paper splits evenly down the middle. Half the paper remains on each half of the turning. A favorite paper to use is the Sunday comics. When split they look like they were printed backwards.
These are some examples of my split turnings.
