Mark Baker was our demonstrator for our October meeting and as usual he was very much the teacher as well as showing us some good tips again mainly on decoration but not with the expensive toys Nick Agar was using. Mark started off with a log of Maple which was still fairly wet. As he turned the outside shape he found a split appear that wasn’t obvious at the start but carried on to achieve the shape he liked leaving a chucking spigot on the base. He reversed it and started hollowing it using both gouges and scrapers until he achieved a thin wall just managing to keep the split from going any further. He then took it off the chuck, reversed it on to a jam chuck and carefully removed the chucking spigot. In the photo the split is just above the little finger. |
 |
For his second piece Mark would make a box from a blank of rippled ash. Mounted between centres he turned the blank to a cylinder. He then roughly shaped the box before parting off the lid, leaving a spigot to mount it on later. After drilling a starter hole in the base using a spindle gouge he continued to hollow it out using a ring tool finishing with a french curve scraper. Sexy or wot? He then turned a spigot for the lid to fit over before taking it off the lathe, carefully marking it to be sure to get it back in the same position later. Then he mounted the lid on the lathe and hollowed it out finishing with a ring tool and turned a recess to fit the base with a fairly tight fit so that it could be jammed on the base to finish the shaping. This was eased slightly at the end for the lid to be an easy fit. |
 |
 |
For his third piece Mark set up on the lathe a part turned bowl and finished shaping the outside to a good finish. He then marked out a grid like pattern and used this as a guide as he carved various grooves and finger nail markings as shown here in these photos. |
 |
 |  |
He followed this with another part turned blank which he first decorated using a beading tool to form ridges and troughs across the face and hollowed out the centre to form tea light holder. He then faced off the grooves and carved a series of grooves using arbotec cutters as you see here. |
 |
 |
Mark’s final item of the day was another box, this time from a nice piece of London plane. He turned it in the usual way, creating a rough outline then parting off a piece for the lid and hollowing out the base using a ring tool to start but because the tool overhang over the tool rest became too far he changed to a stronger tool looking much like skewchi tool. Once satisfied with the shape he removed it and turned the lid. Then he put the base back on the lathe and carefully turned the neck to fit the lid which he fitted and brought the tailstock up to support it while he turned the final shape. He textured this box using a thread chaser having ten tpi. “Because that’s what he had with him” you can choose any pitch you like. He also likes to cut a groove where the join is so that if there is any movement in the wood after a short while it wont show. |
 |
A good day with Mark frequently stopping to discuss the type of tool he was using and why.
The next meeting is on Saturday 12th November and we have got Tony Handford with us for the day. We have all seen Tony and are familiar with his very artistic work using logs of timber that I think it’s fair to say “have character”. Come along and see what he has in store for us this time round. |
| BACK |