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Chris Eagles was our demonstrator for May and was he organised or what? He brought his own lathe because he uses various chucks, mainly to save time and he had custom built tool racks and grinder bench, all built to suit his height. Tall. After a brief chat about himself and his experiences as a teacher of woodturning, with quite a bit of humour thrown in he started on his first demo of the day. This was to show us that the dreaded skew chisel is not something we should be scared of!! He turned a square to a cylinder with it, a bead and a cove with it, rough cuts and planning cuts and ended up with a lump of wood looking like a small Christmas tree! Easy!! He also had a sample piece of spindle turning that incorporated all the traditional shapes and forms. This had been cut in half along its length to show off their clean outline. Curves going into clean square shoulders etc. Quite different to Toby Kaye’s thoughts that shapes should all flow into one another. He then got down to his first project of the day which was to turn a natural edge bowl from a log of wet birch. Instead of cutting it in half on the bandsaw he used a splitter and a club hammer. Well, he didn’t, Paul did. A splitter will follow the grain where a bandsaw wont. He then described to us what he was seeing in the two halves from the pith out to the bark. Chris then cuts the half log to a circle on the bandsaw using a cardboard template to guide him. The blank was then set between centres and the outside shaped with a bowl gouge and finished with a skew chisel held at a negative rake being used as a shear scraper. Chris uses an arm rest here (like Bill Jones’s thread cutting rest) because it saves him the time and effort of altering the tool rest. The outside finished he reversed the piece and started hollowing it out, first with a 1/2” bowl gouge, then a hook tool to really rip out the middle before returning to the bowl gouge to get a fine finish. This bowl he would leave at this stage for a couple of weeks before finishing. His next project was to turn a goblet with a natural edge from a wet pear log but before he started he judged the entries for the turning of the month. Not so many entries for May but Chris spent quite a bit of time looking at them all and finally chose Geoff Hunt’s elm bowl for first certificate and Howard Overton’s natural edge hawthorn bowl as runner up. He also discussed the other entries before getting back to the goblet where he roughed down one end of the log and formed a spigot and then reversed it and gripped the spigot in the chuck. Next he hollowed out the end with a bowl gouge and also a ring tool explaining the difference between the large and small sides of the tool. He described his tools all through the day as to how they should be used and how they should be sharpened and what effect different angles of grind would have. After hollowing out he went back to the outside and formed the stem of the goblet, keeping as much wood behind the tool as he could while leaving himself room to turn the back of the goblet to a thin wall. The stem was then completed and the base formed with a bead at its junction with the stem. I had to leave before he got far in to his last project of the day so I’m afraid there are no photos to show you. The theme was to make a box with a lid that had inserts that were fitted off centre. From a square piece he turned it to a cylinder leaving an inch or so for chucking. He then set up a chuck that had accessory jaws installed and fitted only two of them with an extension. The inserts were round pieces of a different wood and Chris used a forstener bit to drill the hole for them. With only two jaws in use he was able to set the square end over to one side and drill the hole up to the edge of the lid. Next he would move the block over and drill another hole on the opposite side. (if the lid was big enough you could fit several inserts). You can then turn the block through 90 deg. and repeat the process. I’m sure everybody enjoyed the day and learnt quite a lot about tools and sharpening them and a different twist on offset turning. Our next meeting is on Saturday 9th June and Jennie Starbuck, who I am sure we are all looking forward to meeting will be with us for the day. Jennie is renowned for her decorative work on bowls. That’s it from me except for a couple of notes on the notice board. See you all on the 9th. Graham And just a few pictures of a depressingly wet weekend at Farmers World although we were tucked up in a shed. Pictures in the gallery. Bert was in charge of sales with Norman, Peter, Paul and Michael turning out goodies for Bert to flog. All we needed was a customer. Bert did have one but I had my back turned and missed her. Bloody typical! The Hands on Night Quite a lot of you have said that last year it was too near Christmas and clashed with other arrangements you had already made, so for this year we plan to hold it on Friday 30th November. The venue will most likely be the same as last year. |
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