Mark Baker was the demonstrator for our September meeting and as always with him it was an interesting day.
He started off giving a short talk about design and how he gets most of his inspirations from looking at shapes and forms found in museum displays of very early examples of pottery and wooden utensils. He even uses iron solutions to create a rusted effect as seen when old artefacts are dug up.

Today’s exercise was to be a lidded bowl made from a single sycamore blank cut from square (cheaper than buying blanks already cut circular). Trapped between centres, Mark uses a ring revolving centre to avoid having a deep hole to remove at the end and a special drive centre he had made with drive spurs set wide apart, sharpened screws in this case, because he wanted to avoid damage to the centre that would become the knob on the lid. All the time thinking ahead avoids disappointment later.

The outside was turned and decorated by cutting beads using a bead forming tool and then taking every other one out with a parting tool rounded on the end to create a groove giving a ridge and trough finish or beehive effect.
Sanding this would be difficult so Mark used a rotary plastic tool with layers of flappy discs to smooth out the raised grain.
Then the blank was reversed on to the chuck and after facing it off a core was taken out to be used as the lid. Looking like a long parting tool with a flared end to avoid trapping as the cut was made Mark cut in to the blank at about 45 degrees until he reached the point where a thump on the rim caused the tiny bit left to snap and there you had it.

The lid was first mounted on the lathe by gripping the spigot that would ;later become the knob and the inside was shaped and a spigot turned to locate it on the bowl. A neat fit but not too tight.
The bowl was again put on the lathe with the lid in place and the outside of the lid finished and blended in to the bowl, the final parting off done with the long point of the skew chisel leaving just a tiny pip to remove by hand.

Mark’s second piece for the day was to be a box from a block of sycamore.
After turning it to a cylinder he started to shape the outside, his design was to be like a squash or gourd, he noticed a crack appear so he filled it with super glue and continued shaping it, happily it didn’t get worse.
When he was satisfied with the appearance so far he parted off a section to be used for the lid. Next came the hollowing out for which he started off with a spindle gouge to do the rough hollowing and then finished off using a small Sorby tear drop scraper and a half round scraper with a fine top bevel which allows you to hold the scraper horizontal rather than pointing down.
Happy with way it looked so far he took it off the lathe and mounted the piece to make the lid. He turned the inside slightly hollowed and created a spigot to be a fairly tight fit in the body. He put the body back in the lathe and fitted the lid and brought up the tail stock to give extra support. He then finished the outside shaping, blending the lid in to the body and then decorating the body using the long point of a skew chisel. This piece he also gave to us to raffle at one of our charity events.

Our next meeting is on 10th October and Stuart King will be our demonsrator for the day. Someone I think we have all been looking forward to. Stuart has visited us before and we all had a very enjoyable day so let's have lots of bums on seats on Saturday and enjoy another basin full.

Also, don't forget the fish and chip and skittles day on Saturday 24th October. If you still haven't booked your seat and choice of food there will be just time for a last minute booking on Saturday.

The following day, Sunday 25th October, we will be at the SAW competition held at Mytchett in Surrey. Will we win the top prize this year? Why not come along and see what happens. Graham

Notice Board

Items for our Charity events

We will being doing another charity event at Elm Court Garden Centre again close to Christmas but because of earlier extremely good results we find ourselves somewhat embarrassed for things to sell so can you all dig dep in to the back of your playrooms for some nice quality pieces we can sell please.
We will be supporting the MacMillan Cancer Research on this occasion.