October saw Tony Handford with us again and as I thought, he is still into big lumps of wood, some of it of the kind that some of us would probably chuck straight in the fire. Sorry Tony.

His first project of the day was to turn a bowl from a piece of cankered ash (for that read manky ash!!) The photo doesn’t do it justice.
He started off by turning it between centres and to be sure it didn’t fly around the room if it lost its grip he drilled a recess to fit the drive centre into and then hammered it home before setting it up on the lathe.
At a low speed he rough turned the outside shape and turned a spigot to hold on to when he reversed it to hollow it out.
He reversed it and held the spigot in the chuck but also brought the tail stock up to give maximum support while getting the worst out of the centre.
Once it was safe to do so he took the centre away and finished hollowing it out. Well not quite. He gave it to the club to finish off later to be used as a raffle prize at one of our charity events. Somehow Steve Tredwell drew the short straw for this.

Tony’s second project was to be a natural edged bowl turned from a piece of acacia. The principle he followed was pretty much the same as his first piece.

Item number three was to be a vase turned from a log of burr field maple. With all his pieces Tony does take time to study each log carefully to determine where best to fit his drive centre to be sure he gets the best out of the log.

He sets it up on the lathe as before and sets about turning the outside in the same way as the previous pieces but when it came to hollowing he demonstrated several different tools that are similar in design but some better, and more expensive, than others. Our lathe was not happy at the heavy work it was being asked to do and tried to escape. A bit of extra holding down weight was called for and Paul gallantly gave his body to the cause!! Bravo.
Photo in the gallery

To end the day Tony finish turned a monkey puzzle tree bowl that he rough turned at the demonstration he gave last year with us. It had not distorted very much and ran fairly true when he set it up. He held it on its spigot in the chuck and finished the inside and then with the inside face held on to a jam chuck and the tail stock centre brought up to now protruding spigot he finished off the outside leaving only a tiny spigot to be remove by hand.

Tony very kindly donated all the pieces he produced today to the club to be used as raffle prizes at the charity events we hold. I don’t know if Steve Tredwell got stuck with finishing them all to a final and beautiful finish but as mentioned earlier, he copped for the first one at least.

Just a brief note about the SAW day at Mytchett. We came nowhere!! The first went to The Forest of Bere for the third time running, second placed was Surrey Association and third was Middlesex Woodturning Association. It was not all bad news though. Howard Overton, Pat Hughes and Dave Reed all received highly commended rosettes for their entries. Well done.

Another high note is that we raised £125 at the fish and chip lunch for the Sittingbourne branch of the MS Society.

Lionel won the cup for the skittles after a play off against Pat Hughes. Three ladies battled it out for the ladies prize and was won by Paul’s wife Billie.

Our next meeting is on Saturday 8th November and we have got Phil Jones with us for the day who as well as being on the register of professional woodturners is a member of the Middlesex club mentioned above. His work is varied from simple to quite complicated. What will he do for us? Come along on Saturday and find out.

Enclosed with this newsletter you will find your renewal form for 2015 and a copy of the meeetings calendar for 2015. As always, the sooner I have all the renewals the sooner I can get the Members Directory out to you.

Graham