Yew Hollow Form.

Last night I visited the woodturning club at Yandles to watch Mark Sanger do a Demo.
Mark demonstrated making a Textured wide rim bowl followed by a hollow form hollowed through the base.
I have never done any hollowing this way before so I thought I would give it a go.
This is the result of my first go and I am quite pleased with it.
The piece of Yew was part of a parcel from  http://www.turnerscabin.co.uk/

A thing of beauty

This morning I was dead heading my roses when I spotted a Bee collecting pollen.
I managed to get a pic of it .

Demo by Frans Brown.

On Tuesday next 26 07 2011 we have a Demo evening by Frans Brown in our club.
http://www.burnham-on-sea-wtc.co.uk/
This is an opportunity not to be missed.
Click on the link to see examples of Frans Brown's work on his Website.
Click here

A very nice present.

My wonderful wife Susan has bought me a new lathe.
It is an Axminster AW1416VS info What I like about this lathe is that you can turn up to 14" over the bed.
Most of the work I do is bowls between 10" and 13" so this is more than adequate also the short bed means I am able to make hollow forms without the swivel head.
I have had a bit of a go with it and it seems to be very powerful.
Time will tell but the only things I am a bit disappointed with is the 6" tool rest I think a lathe of this capacity needs a 9" or 10" rest.This is not a problem as I have a spare rest.
The only other thing is that the control box magnet does not seem powerful enough and I have knocked it off once and put a small crack in the casing.
One of the reasons I have got this lathe is because I intend doing more demo's in the future and at 40 kg it is easier to move than my Nova DVR.
I think I am going to be very pleased with this lathe.

Because I have now upgraded to this lathe I am selling my Axminster AWVSL lathe complete with K10 chuck and jaws.

This package from Axminster would cost £283  00 it is hardly used and for sale for £200 00.

I can be contacted on g.foweraker@sky.com

Visiting Birmingham.

My wife Susan and I have just returned from a short visit to Birmingham.
We stayed in a hotel about 200 yards from the Bullring shopping centre and about a quarter of a mile from the Birminghan Museum.
Approx half our time was spent walking around the shops and half walking around the City centre.It is amazing how many things there are in the centre of a City  that can be inspirational to a woodturner.We looked around the museum and art Gallery's for many hours and I was amazed how much there was to see.For me this was the most enjoyable part of our three day break and i have seen lots of things and have got many ideas for the future.Here are just a few of the over 200 pics that I took in the Museum



More wood

I have just bought a load more wood and can feel a bandsawing and roughing out session coming on.
Dry Beech Ash and Sycamore.
Wet Sycamore.

Yesterday I cut this lot up into bowl blanks I have no Idea how many there are but as you can see there is quite a few.

The ones thrown randomly on the floor are all dry and ready to turn and finish.The ones int the three stacks are wet Sycamore and will all be roughed out for wide rimmed bowls to be dried slowly ready for turning and finishing in several months time.

That is all the wet Sycamore roughed out.40 in total.

This lot is all air dried I will still rough out a lot of them because although they are air dried it is still a good idea to rough them out and let them dry to the same as the workshop.  

This is the result 104 blanks from 18" x 5" down to 6" x 2" from the dry boards and 40 from the wet Sycamore.