July 6th Rocking vessel

This months demonstration was provided by Mark Hancock. He showed us some tips and techniques he uses to create unusual hollow forms like these:

He started by pointing us to a website http://woodturningdesign.info/ which currently says it’s closed, but still provides some pdf downloads with some tutorials to help with design considerations in creating wood turnings.

The demonstration took us from a large cylinder, roughed the outside shape between centres. Then mounted in a chuck and refined the outside, before hollowing the interior.

Then he formed the exterior texture by forming a set of coves at even spaces, then used a mini arbotech to cut the parallel cuts (parallel to the lathe bed)

He talked a little about ebonising, and different gases that you can use (the hotter they burn the better they are at ebonising quickly without checking the wood)

He was kind enough to do the burning outside, so as not to set off our smoke alarms. To finish the ebonising he used a bristle brush on the lathe to burnish the burned sections down to a smooth finish.

This finish is good enough to leave it, however to add more interest and colour, he used a rasp file to file back to the clean wood in areas that he wanted colour to catch, then used a spray gun connected to an air compressor to layer on some colours.

All in all it was a very informative demonstration, that showed a lot of varied techniques.