June 2009 Newsletter

As you have all probably heard by now, sadly two more of our members have passed away. Jo Sammut died on 5th April and Graham Ockenden died on the 3rd May. We held a one minute silence of respect for them before continuing with the day with Dave Reeks. Right from the start Dave had to put up with a lot of stick that I am sure Graham would have been proud of but Dave was not to be put off and gave as good as he got. The first item he made was a box from a piece of yew that he said was always a good sales item at any craft fair. His second piece was to rough turn a large wet walnut log which will eventually be a bowl. Dave traps the log between the face of the chuck and a revolving centre and turns a spigot for the chuck without cleaning it up first. “That’s time wasting” he said. Then he mounted it in the chuck with the running centre for added support and turned the outside to the approximate shape he wants and then the inside. This log has a nice feature inside where a knot appeared. (See picture in the May gallery). The log will be boiled for two hours and then stored for about four to five weeks before being finished off. Boiling gets rid of most of the sap so the rough turned piece is ready for finishing a lot sooner than just leaving it to dry on a drying rack. It also distorts a lot less and runs almost true when remounted on the lathe Item three was a part turned walnut bowl that had been boiled and was ready for finishing. Boiling makes the wood go black but this is only on the surface and as soon as Dave took a couple of cuts the natural colour of the wood came through. The next demo was to turn a platter from a sycamore blank that will be textured and then coloured. The first attempt was aborted after it was seen to be riddled with woodworm. Dave bought the blank from Styles and Bates who he said are very good at replacing a piece this bad. He had brought with him a platter that he started earlier and so he set this one up to carry on with. The centre was dished and the remainder of the face was textured with a Robert Sorby texturing tool. Then a rim was formed to the outer edge and a bead to the edge of the centre dish. These were covered with “art masking fluid” to prevent the colour spray from straying onto these areas. Dave is into orange and black at the moment, he has done the reds and blues and yellows. He never uses green because it doesn’t sell. First he airbrushed the textured area with the orange and then went over the edges with black, and when it was dry he carefully cut the edges with a skew chisel and peeled the masking away leaving a nice clean edge to accentuate the textured area.(See pictures in the May gallery) The last piece of the day was to be the start of a large ash vase. Setting the log between centres he rough turned the outside to the approximate shape he will end up with and formed a 4” spigot to suit the chuck jaws. Then he set the log in the chuck and drilled a hole up the middle with a large saw tooth bit. Then Dave set up his deep hollowing tool to show us just how easy it is to produce large vessels if you have the right kit to hand! He uses a Hamlet deep hollowing cutter on his tool bar and the Hamlet Siragas scrapers to finish off with. He recommends that you use a tool rest with an upright pin fitted to it to back up the support to the tool bar.(See pictures in the May galery) And that was it for our day with Dave. He had to put up with a lot of stick during the day but we still managed to run over time. Many thanks for a good day Dave. Our next meeting is on the 13th June and Brian Wooldridge will be our man for the day. I have tried to get an idea of what he does from the internet but he doesn’t have any work displayed there. A report on the Cheam site shows him doing involuted turning and thin wall vases so let’s see what he has in store for us. I will be on holiday but hopefully Alan Smith will be taking a few notes and Pat Hughes will get a couple of photos so that when I come home I will have something for me to quickly put a newsletter together with for July. Have a good meeting. Graham Note from Your Chairman Norman Smithers phoned Bert recently to say that he had sold a yew vase at a craft fare a couple of weeks ago and the buyer took it home and put water in it, and it split! He went and complained to Norman and Norman told him it was not meant to have water in it! Norman’s question to Bert was “could there be any legal implications here?” We don’t know but to be on the safe side, when you sell something it should perhaps have a note attached advising against this or at least tell your customer at the time of purchase. Our average customer wouldn’t even try this but this person is french and he said “in France we do this “!! Yea, well. Notice board Farming World We have two sets of dates for us to show at Farming World this year. As usual we will have two sales tables, one for members to sell turnings for their own profit and one where we sell donated pieces for charity. The first dates are 29th, 30th and 31st August. On this occasion the charity we will support will be the Sittingbourne Branch for multiple sclerosis research. The second dates are the 19th and 20th September when we will support the SNAP Charity (special needs activity projects) which is this year’s choice of Farming World. Fish ‘n’ chips Paul has arranged the fish and chip lunch for Saturday 26th September. Time and cost will be advised nearer the date.

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