He turned up with an enormous Vicmarc lathe and all his kit in a horse box towed by a Land Rover which seriously challenged the access to the institute.

The first demo was a round bottom bowl with double off centre hollows. The yew blank was mounted on a screw chuck to turn the outside. Greg is not a fan of long grind gouges, preferring more traditional grinds for bowl work. Long ground gouges were really designed for pull cuts along the grain for hollow forms and not for push cuts. Greg’s favourite tool is the 5/8” bowl gouge and he has several, ground at various angles. Steep angles like 60^o are used for working deep inside a bowl in order to maintain a rubbing bevel when far from the rest. Working closer to the rest, Greg uses his little finger on the rest to stop the gouge kicking back on entering the work before the bevel can be brought into play.

The face was partly cut as well whilst mounted this way round, leaving a small raised area in the centre. Having sanded the outside, the bowl was removed and the raised centre roughly flattened with a power chisel. 2 centres were marked on the face and the bowl mounted in a jig to turn the hollows. The jig consisted of 2 wooden discs held together with long bolts. The rear disc had a spigot screwed on for chuck mounting and the front disc had a hole through which the hollows could be turned. The bowl was mounted offset with the smaller hollow centre on the axis and this was scooped out with a bowl gouge. Remounting with the larger hollow centred allowed this to be turned. Careful power sanding is needed to maintain the sharp line between the 2 hollows.

The second demo was a bud vase with an offset flared rim with a natural edge. Starting with the log between centres but offset, the stem was started below the rim for balance but left thick at this stage for support. A spigot was turned at the base to get into a chuck ASAP. The flared rim was turned carefully on both sides. Firm tool work is needed since there is no chance of supporting the gouge via the bevel. A hole was drilled at slow speed with a gouge to the required depth. The stem was turned in stages, working towards the base. It is not possible to go back to re-turn the rim or top of stem so it has to be finished as you go.

At this point we were given a choice of a third quick demo or a critique of the gallery. The project was chosen. This was Greg’s method of turning a sphere. Starting with a square section blank Greg turned a cylinder between centres. Marking the length equal to the diameter, the ends were rounded over. It was then parted off and re-mounted at about 45^o between cups on the drive and tail centres. The shadow outline indicating where it wasn’t round was turned away. This was repeated with the sphere at different angles until an acceptable sphere was obtained, finishing by sanding. This is one of the few occasions when sanding is used for shaping.

We had been treated to a very full entertaining evening. It was a pity that time did not allow a critique since the table was full of really well turned items. They are all featured on the website.

Dave Gibbard

The latest round of the Challenge invited members to select from the following list:

A- Make something from a 2” x 2” x 12” blank,

B- Make Something involving carving or texturing,

C- Interpret ”the Magic Roundabout”

The challenge attracted a disappointing 13 entries from just 10 members, 6 for category A, 5 for B and 2 for C. 52 members attending the meeting were balloted for their 1st, 2nd and 3rd favourite items. Weighting these votes 3 points for each 1st, 2 points for 2nd and 1 for 3rd and totting up the totals produced the following:-

First choice: Harry Woollhead’s “Magic Roundabout” featuring inlaid sections of branches set in black resin.

Second choice: Jack Mansfield’s bird carving on pebbles in a burr elm ring.

Third choice: Derek Luke’s “Magic roundabout” featuring a clever operation with the ribbons winding round the centre pole.

Thanks to everyone who responded, all the entries are pictured below post. Let’s have some more of you next time.

Roy Nailor’s tools & jigs

Roy apologised to those who have seen his treasures before. This was quite unnecessary as those who have would surely agree the home-made or adapted tools, jigs etc were worth another look.

Roy is an engineer by profession and is always coming up with designs of jigs and tools often made from throw away items. Among other things, he described:

Indexing devices including a novel use of an old bandsaw blade whose teeth mark angular divisions when bent round a cylinder depending on the radius.

A whole variety of jam chucks using split tapered wooden cylinders with a slip ring to tighten.

Screw chucks designed for holding fruit.

Hacksaw blades made into thin parting tools (handles optional).

Masonry nails ground into miniature skew chisels, parting and hook tools.

Roll pins ground to make miniature gouges.

Old files ground to make scrapers. (Note the correct safety advice is not to use files for making such tools as they are brittle. However, the forces on scrapers make shattering unlikely but if you do this it is your decision.)

An old record turntable fitted with a sanding or buffing discs with a jig for sharpening gouges traversing a cord being rotated in the process.

I am sure Roy would be happy to talk to members who have specific questions about his ideas.

Roy must be so busy making all these things that I’m surprised he finds time to use them!

Please view our disclaimer page with regard to the trying to replicate any of the above devices

Jennie covered so much that this report is not going to be a detailed account. Take a look at her website www.artycraftywoodturning.com for a fuller picture. Jennie said she’d be happy to answer questions too and you can contact her via the website. She also has a list of suppliers of tools and materials she will let you have.

For piercing, the starting item (often a bowl) needs to be thin, not much more than 1 mm and of uniform thickness. She demonstrated making a shallow bowl from sycamore. Since the bowl was shallow she used a conventional straight gouge grind. When hollowing she left plenty of wood in the centre when turning the rim and worked towards the centre. She warned against trying to go back to the rim to do a final finishing cut – it will have moved.

She uses a dentist’s drill with a burr tip to cut a pattern by piercing. A Dremell works too but the dentist’s drill is much faster and the cut is less sensitive to the grain of the wood.

So how do you get the pattern onto the wood for piercing?

Well, you can just draw on the wood freehand if you feel confident enough.

Or you can use grids with radial and axial lines and mark up by joining corners of grid boxes rather like marking up spirals on spindles. An indexing device on the lathe helps with this but Jennie will sell you grids for the purpose.

You can buy stickers of shapes and patterns which will do the job if you can find some that suit.

Another method is to get a paper print of a line drawing, hold on the wood and transfer the ink by dabbing the paper with a suitable solvent like cellulose thinners or xylene. The solvent obviously has to dissolve the ink. You might need to get a photo-copy as most ink jet printers present a problem.

Jennie then spoke about crackle paint and went on to demonstrate the use of iridescent paint. In bulk this appears not to be coloured, the colour only becoming apparent when spread thin. This is achieved by a suspension of mica particles of certain sizes which reflect light, the colour being produced by optical interference, rather like the colours on a film of oil on water. It looked great fun if a little messy, spreading the different paint colours around with the fingers!

Finally she had a tip if you want to reserve an area for piercing bounded by thicker wood, maybe separated by a bead. (She’s a fan of beading tools by the way, for speed if you are going to do any number of them, especially if they need to be the same size). Putting this detail on the face of a bowl when it is thin is difficult because of lack of rigidity. Jennie suggested cutting the beads and recessed area on the face first, then turning the back in a smooth curve. She left a spigot in the centre of the face for reversing to do the back, reversing again to remove the spigot.

She was happy to give her comments on the members’ gallery items. A good display this time as you can see on the HWA website.

Finally she presented the Club with a turned wooden plaque carved and coloured with the Club logo. This was produced with a CNC laser cutter which she and Chris were playing with. What a clever, generous gesture.

Dave Gibbard   

Dave Gibbard was demonstrating wet turning with emphasis on retaining a bark or “natural” edge. He had brought a number of examples of different styles which can be seen on the members’ gallery pictures.

He first turned an end grain bowl in yew, i.e. with the core of the wood in the direction of the lathe axis. This is a nice way to present the whole cross section of the branch and the often interesting shape of the edge. However the core is retained and some star cracking is almost inevitable. The outside was partly turned first but leaving a large amount of wood around a spigot at the foot at this stage to give support for turning the rim. Reversing onto the spigot allowed hollowing to start but the important thing is to concentrate on the rim. This will start to move as it dries and there’s no going back with a cutting tool. It’s a good idea to run some thin superglue along the bark/sapwood interface at this stage.

Keeping the bowl mounted on the spigot the outside and inside were alternately worked towards the foot. Normally Dave would have proceeded directly to sand whilst wet but in this case the bowl was put in a plastic bag with wet shavings to be finished later.

The next item was a tulip shaped bowl with the core at right angles to the lathe axis. The method employed was similar but the bowl was initially mounted on an expanding pin chuck. With this orientation the grain is across the spigot and usually in the weaker sap wood. Care must be taken when hollowing as a dig in could tear it off sending the bowl across the room. Dave likes to use a large spigot which is much larger than the eventual foot. The hollowing is quite deep and there is a good case for using a hollowing tool. However, Dave was using a bowl gouge supported by a rest thin enough to insert into the hole as a cheaper alternative.

Off Centre Turning

John started by turning an off-centre female figure in beech which came out somewhat well endowed! The next project was a candlestick. Both these project were turned between centres, shifting the live centre by about 6mm in opposite directions. The candlestick was going very nicely until a lapse of concentration led to a dig in and the wood broke in two. But at least John demonstrated what not to do! Finally John turned a small finial successfully. This was held in a chuck and just tilted in the jaws. John can supply instructions for turning the figure if anyone is interested.

Twists

Bob Hope demonstrated the making of twists on spindles to decorate things like chair or table legs and parts of table or floor lamps. The process can also be used to decorate vases as well.

First the spindle is turned to size and the ends left square to start with to aid holding whilst carving the twist. The twist is then marked out. The first piece was marked out for a double or barley twist. First the pitch lines are drawn at intervals of the same distance as the diameter of the piece. These are then subdivided into four sections and lines are drawn around the diameter. Then four equally spaced lines are drawn along the length along the quarter points of the diameter. This gives a grid and lines are drawn around the circumference joining the crossing points of the pitch and longitudinal lines. For a double twist this line crosses two of the divisions before meeting the next longitudinal line. Two lines are drawn from opposite sides of the piece. For a single twist the line will cross every corner.

A saw cut is made along this circumference line about 5mm deep and the hollow is made with a file or microplane to a depth of one third of the diameter. The high points or bines ore rounded over with a file and the hollows and bines and blended in and sanded. He then demonstrated a hollow twist where a hole is drilled before turning the piece and involves deepening the hollow to break through into the centre hole and carving and shaping the bines.

Many thanks to Dave, John and Bob for dem0nstrating.

Some of the supporting activities were run by committee volunteers for the night to allow the regular operators to participate in the quiz. Lynda and Derek Barkaway dispensed free tea, coffee and snacks including some of Lynda’s wonderful biscuits and cakes. Keith Barnes and his wife took over the raffle, the prizes tonight reflecting the occasion. Geoff Spierling and Helen, however, ran the shop as usual. Geoff had gone to a lot of trouble making things for the challenge to make a Christmas decoration but forgot to bring them. What a shame as the response from everyone else was disappointingly poor, just 6 items on the table.

People formed themselves into 6 teams. The first task was to think of a name and they chose “I Told You So”, “Hogwarts”, “Outnumbered”, “Brain Dead”, “Crawlers” and “The Young Ones” (!) (the exclamation mark is mine- Editor). The quiz master was chairman John Holden with rounds provided by himself, me (Dave Gibbard), Robert Long, Denis Hilditch, Lynda Barkaway and Keith Barnes. Phil Bristow and Bob Hope also contributed rounds but such was the response that they were held over for next time. Nothing like getting ahead of the game! Alan Sturgess kept score.

Quiz rounds were “Around the World”, General Knowledge, Sport, “Who turned that?”, Scrambled Phrases, Parliamentary Quotes, People Dates and Places and Christmas Carols.

By the second round, “I told you so” had their noses in front and managed to stay there in spite of an abysmal knowledge of Christmas carols. In fact no team managed to identify more than 4 carols from the lines within them provided by Lynda. Obviously woodturners don’t sing.

The teams were invited to vote for their favourite decoration. It was close but the winner that eventually emerged was Gerald Nicholson’s bell.

Dave Gibbard