We had Tony Handford with us for our November meeting and from the start he had digs at my saying in the last newsletter that he used rubbish lumps of wood.
I was referring to a previous meeting when his log did look well manky but what he made of it came out as another of his artistic pieces.


Today’s two lumps were interesting as you will see.
His first project was to be a natural edge bowl from a log of Burr Field Maple.
Not even manky looking Tony!
As with all his work Tony is very safety conscious and always bores a shallow recess to accept the drive spur so that if, as sometimes happens, it slips and mills a flat the log won’t come flying off the lathe.
This done he set it up on the lathe and brought up the tail stock, aiming it to get the log running as evenly as possible.
The bark side is to the headstock and will become the recess of the bowl.

All set and happy it was safe to go he turned the base leaving a spigot to mount in the chuck when turning the inside.
He finished the surface using a cabinet maker’s scraper as a shear scraper before final sanding.
These do have to be handled with care or red stuff might start appearing on your nicely finished bowl!!
He also used a power sander and around the burr edge he hand sanded it with the lathe stationary using various shaped sanding pads to hold the sand paper.
The inside was turned out in the usual way taking care not to damage the bark on the rim.
This was sanded again using power and hand sanding and the final act was to remove the spigot.
He left one of us to put the finishing oil on and donated it to us as a raffle prize at our next charity event.

Tony’s second piece of the day was to be a hollow form from a beech wart?
Drum roll and photo please(in the gallery).
Tony had never turned one of these before and he wasn’t sure whether it would fall apart from the piece of the tree trunk where there seemed to be a definite seam.
So, as cautious as ever he mounted it between centres, lumpy bit towards the chuck.
This log was very wet so he was only going to rough turn it for today.
He turned the base, quite gingerly for him, watching to see what was happening at the join as he went but all went well and he formed a spigot to fit the chuck before taking it off the lathe.
He mounted it in the chuck and shaped the rest of the outside before drilling a starter hole for hollowing using a fairly large drill with a morse taper shank to fit directly in to the tail stock.
This done he hollowed it out, confident now it was not going to fall apart.
He used both a woodcut hollowing tool and a Rolly Munro hollowing tool supported in his own design deep hollowing tool rest.
He finished when the wall thickness was around 1/2” .
He passed it to Norman to finish off in a few months time to be offered again as a raffle prize at one of our charity events.

And that took us to the end of a very enjoyable day. Many thanks Tony.

You will find enclosed with this newsletter your membership renewal forms for 2016.
You have already had the events calendar so I’m sure you have been anxiously awaiting the chance to sign up for another year and still it is only £20/£30. BUT this will probably change for 2017.
Our running costs have increased a little over the years but our subscription has stayed the same since the last increase in 2009.
This will be discussed at the AGM in January. Again I will ask you to get your subscriptions in asap so that I can get the membership directory out to you in the new year.
As well as cash and cheques you can also pay using your debit/credit card when you come to the December meeting as Paul has now got a card reader in the club’s name.
It will cost an extra 50p though.

Also included is the menu for the annual club dinner to be held at the Fruiterers Arms on Saturday 20th February and an order form for your choice of meal.
The cost is £24 per person.

Don’t forget that we hold the competition for the Orchard Memorial Trophy on this night with entries being judged by the ladies.
Any piece you enter must NOT have been entered in any of the club day competitions.

And finally.
The Charity Event at Woodlands Garden Centre.

What a result. We raised an amazing £1,046 for MacMillan Cancer Research.
Many thanks to everyone who donated items for sale of such good quality and to everyone who made it such a success.
It helped a lot that people could buy using their credit cards. Thanks to Paul for setting this up.
The people at the garden centre made us very welcome and would be happy to have us back again next year.

Graham