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Our March meeting saw us being entertained by Tony Walton and a very good day it was too. We had 36 bums on seats and everyone came back after lunch for second helpings. Brilliant!! For openers Tony set up a log of wet (very wet) sycamore saying he was going to turn a thin stemmed goblet. To turn the log to a cylinder he started off between centres but mounted it slightly off centre otherwise the stem would consist of the pith and would disappear. He turned the cylinder with a spindle roughing gouge and formed a chucking spigot at one end. This done he mounted it in the chuck and hollowed out the bowl of the goblet. Then he brought the tail stock up with a revolving centre fitted and lightly wound it up to the bowl using a piece of kitchen paper to protect it. TIP. Only use a very free running centre for this. He was demonstrating recently and the stem of the goblet kept sheering off, something that he hadn’t experienced before. It turned out that the centre was a bit stiff and the tension caused the thin spindle to twist off. Ok. The centre in place he turned the back of the bowl to follow the shape of the inside to a very thin wall using a light to gauge the thickness. Next he started on the spindle, turning only a short section at a time, first with a spindle gouge and then finishing cuts with a skew chisel, until it was thinnnn! Tony carried on in short sections until he reached the point to turn the base. This was almost a mirror image of the top. Alan Smith just happened to have a small vernier with him and measured the stem of the finished goblet. 1.5mm!! The second item on Tony’s agenda was a pot, also from wet sycamore and also to be turned equally thin that would be decorated with a piercing of a dragonfly. As before he turned the log to a cylinder and formed a chucking spigot. Mounted in the chuck the outside shape was turned and then the hollowing began . Tony used a spindle gouge for all this work and as the wall got thinner he used a light to gauge the thickness. When the pot was finished Tony chose a dragonfly design that he had found, as well as a lot others, on the internet and had printed them off using a laser jet printer. Inkjet will not work here because his method of transferring the design on to the wood is to tape the transfer on to the wood face down and then go over the back with a graphic artists blender pen. The solvent transfers the image from the paper on to the wood. With a dentists drill (40,000 rpm. £700 !! ) he pierced the outline leaving enough wood to hold it all together. He would use Danish oil to finish the piece. Both this and the goblet Tony gave to the club to raffle off at our next charity show at Farming World. Tony’s final piece was a small textured hollow form with a screwed in finial. For this he used sycamore for the pot, this time it was a dry piece, walnut for the finial and neck of the pot and boxwood for the male and female threaded parts. First the log was turned as before and set up in the chuck. The outside was shaped using a spindle gouge and the inside hollowed out using the spindle gouge and finishing with a Rolly Monro hollowing tool. The outside was textured with a Sorby spiral cutter, cleaned off with a rotary plastic brush and a thin strip of plastic car trim placed in a spiral fashion up the vase to add to the decoration before colouring. The colour was air brushed on using Createx air brush colour, available in a range of colours. As you all know there is not a meeting in April because of the trip to Yandles so our next meeting is on Saturday 8th May and John Berkeley will be with us for the day. He is well known around the country as a demonstrator and has a wide range of skills to show, especially in the making of boxes. We have a couple of other dates to mark in our diaries. April 18th we are having a large gazeebo at the Shorne Wood Fair where we will have a couple of lathes and some sales tables. The show opens at 10 am and If you want to join in and bring items for sale you need to be there around 9.00 am to help set things up. Anyone who brings sales items in and leaves again for the remaining members to sell their goods on their behalf will forfeit 10% of the takings which will be put into club funds. We should also start thinking about items to donate for the show at Farming World in August where we will be supporting the Sittingbourne branch of the MS society and again in September when we will support Demelza House Hospice which is the chosen charity of Farming World. It’s also time to think about what we can put on show at Mytchett at the SAW show. Can we win the best display on show for a fourth consecutive year? Too right we can!! That’s yer lot folks. Have fun at Yandles. I will be in Yorkshire on that day and I’m sorry to say I will be away for the May meeting as well. I am going to have to talk nicely to someone to get a few pics and notes for the June newsletter!! Graham |
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