For our first professional demonstrator since the pandemic began, we welcomed the return of Carlyn Lindsey (The glue lady!) who specialises in Laminated pieces.
Working with wood since she was just 7, Carlyn is inspired by architecture and complex linear structures. She started her laminated work with homemade plywood, using thin ply and coloured paper, which strangely flew apart when she first tried to turn it!
She then discovered coloured veneer and uses a mixtures of Planer/Thicknessers and the Bandsaw/Table saw for preparing her blanks. All of her veneers come from Capita Crispins Veneer supplies in East London.
She starts her work in sketch form, using these to then create a model followed by a detailed measured plan, which she retains in a bible of designs. A lot of her work is done to commission and for exhibitions. Although the start of the pandemic initially caused a lot of work to dry up she now finds herself busier than ever with almost more work than she can handle.
For the first piece, Carlyn turned a Candlestick from a preprepared block. Using a roughing gouge she turned it to round with a gentle cut to protect the edges of the blank from initially ripping out. Once the piece is almost round, she carefully ensures that the blank is well centred. Whilst time consuming, this is critical in ensuring that the pattern from the laminates comes out correctly spaced. One end is squared, she turns the piece and corrects the other before finally tightening the lathe fully and cutting a well sized chuck mount to the narrow end of the piece.
She cleaned up the end of the blank and then prepared to drill a hole for the top of the candle stick to sit in. She uses a sawtooth bit for this, and showed us the handy rechargeable USB grinder that she uses to touch up the sawtooth bits after use.
With the piece now round, she shaped the candlestick, saving the shavings for use in resin as the patterns are quite something. The piece was reversed again to finish the rough shaping. Once complete it’s removed from the lathe and a new piece of sycamore mounted on a hot glue sacrificial piece of wood was mounted to create the Candlestick top.
This was drilled for the candlestick holder and then cut concave and smoothed before reversing and removing the sacrificial chuck mount.
With the main stem back on the lathe, the stem was reduced to the final diameter and the curve refined before cutting a tenon on the narrow end of the blank (the base). This was then reversed and joined with the Top and the curves blended together. A small V cut was made on the join to accent the piece and show off the veneers.
The same was done for the base, before both were painted black by hand (Carlyn would usually spray these in her workshop)
While the paint was drying Carlyn used a smaller pre-prepared blank to make the handle for a Cheese knife. The kits for these come from a Sheffield Steel supplier (RS Polishing) and are of a very good quality.
The knife blank was turned to round and the blade end trimmed to a diameter to suit the ferrule of the blade before drilling. The handle was then turned with a simple recurve and tapered handle towards the base of the hilt. The main stem was sanded to 400 before the base of the hilt was trimmed down to a small diameter before sanding and parting off. Carlyn would usually saw the final cuts before trimming and sanding the end of the handle to 400 grit and then lacquering.
As the paint was dry on the main candlestick, Carlyn fitted the pieces to show the finished article.
Please check the March gallery for photographs of the finish pieces.
Paul
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