Denis Heyer was back with us for our July meeting and this time his projects were larger pieces than before and he started off with a textured bowl.
His choice of wood was mahogany and after truing up the blank he turned the shape for the back and created a spigot so that the piece could be reversed on to the chuck.
This he did and faced it off and then turned a recessed face leaving a bead at the rim and another about two thirds in to where the bowl would be hollowed.
Next he textured the recess using a 4” angle grinder with a chain saw cutter.
Definitely one to keep your fingers well clear of!! He was not happy with his first effort so faced it off again and altered the speed of the lathe and presented the cutter at a slightly different angle.
Both of these factors can give a variety of different effects. He was happy with this finish and after removing the Hairy bits with a rotary brush he started to colour it using aerosol spray paints obtainable from B&Q or Halfords.
The red was his first attempt that he didn’t like and the finished piece was blue.
Happy with texture and colour he finished hollowing the centre of the bowl and re turned the bead on the rim where the texturing tool had torn it out a bit.
He was still not too impressed with what he had done so we asked if we could have it to sell at one of our charity events and he happily agreed. It just needed a little finishing off.

Denis’s second piece was a vase made from a log of chestnut where the ends had been cut off at an angle. Denis made use of this to give the top of the vase a slope with a natural edge. When mounting something like this between centres it is best to use a two prong drive to be sure of full contact with the log.
A four prong drive would not have all prongs driving the log because of its angled end.
(Tony Handford would drill a hole with a forstner bit to sink the drive and give it a square end to contact).
He started turning at a fairly slow speed until the log was in balance and then was able to increase the speed as he turned the outer shape and also creating a spigot so that he could mount it on the chuck to hollow it out.
The final touch was to mount it on a jam chuck and finish the end leaving only a small pip to remove by hand.

The last item of the day was a cherry hollow form.
Denis turned the outside between centres and then to hollow it out he mounted it on to the chuck using a spigot he turned as before.
He started hollowing with a forstner bit on an extension and drilled to what was to be the finished depth. He then used various hollowing tools to hollow it out to demonstrate the different types of tools available to do this including getting under the neck of the form.
When happy with the finished piece, an even wall thickness from top to bottom he sanded it outside and in and parted it off. Again he mounted it on a jam chuck to finish the base, removing the final pip by hand.

Ok. That was Denis for the day. He kept saying he was not happy with the end result of his pieces but we persuaded him that if we could have them to apply a little TLC we could sell them at our next charity event to which he readily agreed.

Our next meeting is on Saturday 12th August and is a club day with the usual smattering of small lathes and most likely Paul hacking in to a large lump on the big lathe. We will have a speed turning competition in the afternoon so if you are going to join in bring along your favourite turning tools all suitably sharpened and have a go.
All I will tell you is that the item is useful, or was when you were a little boy or girl and has to feel nice to hold!!!
Come along and have fun.

Also Dawn is still looking for that really special piece you have that we can enter in this years competition at SAW in October. We came close to winning last year so let’s see if can impress the judges that little bit more this year.

Graham