Journal

Hollowform by Alan Edwards

Tonights demo was due to be held by Geoff Davies but unfortunately he was too unwell to hold it. Everyone at the club wishes you a speedy recovery Geoff.

So Alan stepped up with only a few hours notice to undertake this interesting hollowing demo. Using a 3″ Zebrano disk he began by rounding it and putting a spigot on either end – one of which would later serve as the foot.

Having roughly shaped the outside Alan then offered us an alternative that he had previously made – the same vessel with circular insets using his home made jig to house the Forstner bit and utilising the lathe’s indexing.

Time now to part the vessel in half and hollow leaving a lip in order to rejoin the two halves later. Once glued with Superglue he set about the final shaping including finishing the foot and applying a thinned down coat of melamine (3-2)

The foot now served as the spigot to reverse the vessel, complete the opening with his spindle gouge, and finish.

A really good and interesting project, especially considering the short notice he had. All our thanks go to Alan.

Turned Candlestick with Inside Out Centrepiece

Tonight the club welcomed accomplished turner and demonstrator Robert Till to Droitwich. His chosen project was a turned candlestick incorporating an inside out element as it’s centrepiece. He began by showing us how to glue 2 pieces of shop – bought pine together and mark up his intended design.

Having executed his design using a spindle gouge he parted the 2 pieces – reversed them and then re – glued.

Using a series of beads and coves Robert completed his spindle before separately turning a base for the candlestick.

Thanks to Robert for a very clear and concise demonstration.

The club organised a couple of all day sessions using some of our newly – qualified lathe leaders where new members, in particular, were able to enjoy some 1 to 1 tuition in the basics of woodturning.

As usual on our Hands On evenings we get out our 4 club lathes for members to have a go under the watchful eyes of our lathe leaders. The project set tonight was to make a needle case and a number of members, new and not so new, tackled the task.

A number of people completed the task. Well done everyone!

This evening all members were invited to bring in projects that they have been working on or, tonights theme, something from YouTube. They would then discuss their methods of working and problems they’d encountered. Roy kicked off the evening with a follow up to his recent demo on pen making.

Our MC Russell then introduced a number of diverse projects from the table in front of him which sparked some informative and lively debate in the room.

Next an impressive contribution from Eugene – a competition standard chess set that he had made as his first turning project (putting many of us to shame with the quality of it!!). He had even designed and built his own tools to ensure uniformity of the pieces. Well done Eugene!

The evening was concluded with contributions from two of our more experienced members Roger Borwell and Alan Edwards.

As Alan mentioned on the night this was one of the best Show and Tell’s the club has had with many contributors and a wide variety of woodturning experiences that we can all learn from.