feedspot.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/woodturning_216px.png

Friday 25 July 2014

Claire and Oliver

Today Mother and Son Claire and Oliver came to me for a days tuition.
Oliver is seventeen years old and has done a bit of turning at school but Claire had never touched a lathe before.
They both made very nice bowls out of spalted Beech.

Just checking
 Busy busy

 Making sure there are no marks that should not be there
 Final buffing


Don't they look proud and so they should very well done both of you



Thursday 17 July 2014

Graham and his bowl

Graham is a complete novice and has not done any turning before but he is a natural.
It is not often that you get a student that you just know is going to be a good woodturner but Graham is one.As soon as he started I knew it was going to be an easy day for me.
I hope Graham gets the equiptment and takes up turning as I know he will be good at it.
This bowl is 12" wide and quite deep so a bit of a challenge for a beginner but he coped well







Wednesday 16 July 2014

Fitting new bearing guides and Cutting up blanks

I always buy my wood in plank form usually two inches or three inches thick I recently bought quite a lot of planked wood with a moisture content of between 12% and 16%.
This wood had been air dried inside an open sided building for about three years.
These planks of Ash Beech and Sycamore were about two foot six inches wide and three inches thick.
I have got close to one hundred blanks between twenty one inches and ten inches.
A while ago my brother Chris and I made a sliding table to fit on my Elektra Beckum BAS 500 WNB Bandsaw to make cutting blanks a lot quicker and more accurately.
I had looked at several U Tube vidios on cutting blanks and this was our interpretation it is not a copy of anybody elses but might well be very similar

This is a very good and powerful bandsaw with a cutting height of twelve inches.But one thing I have always been disappointed with was the blade guides they were metal blocks that were very hard to ajust.
I invested in a pair of roller bearing guides from Axminster Tools they were only about fifty five pounds and have made all the difference to the saw. They took about three hours to adapt the saw and set up but well worth the effort.
This is the top guide
 This is the bottom guide.
I have a number of round disks of different sizes that I use to drill my pilot hole they are all marked with the diameter of the blank
I drill the hole through the disk and then remove the disk and the hole in the wood is located on the peg on the table
 There is a row of holes drilled part way through the sliding table to locate the wood on prior to cutting.
All the holes are marked with the diameter of the blank.
The sliding table is made from Corian
 This pic shows the sliding table on the bed of the saw
As you can see there is a slot from the edge of the table to just past the front of the blade.

When the wood is located on the table all you have to do is slide the table forward until the front of the blade is in line with the pilot holes and then turn the wood clockwise to make a perfect round blank
This shows the peg that the blank centres on and it can be moved to any of the size marked holes to determine the blank size
 This is the sliding table underside as you can see there is a tongue that fits into the slot on the bandsaw bed and the wood and ply L shape locks the sliding table down to the bed of the saw.




Tuesday 15 July 2014

Tom

Last week Tom who had been turning for a few years spent two days here honing his tooling techniques and learning some coloring and texturing.
Here are some pics from the course.

When I was waiting for Tom at the local railway station I spotted this squirrel resting in a tree by the car park.
These pics are quite random throughout the two days
























 Two very nice bowls Tom the one one the left is Ash ebonised and guilded.
The one on the right is Ash colored and liming waxed


Saturday 5 July 2014

Neil and his Walnut bowl

Neil has just bought himself a lathe and some tools and has spent a day with me learning the basics of bowl turning.As you can see from the following pics Neil did very well today making a very nice Walnut bowl.

Here are some pics from the days work.

Bringing the blank into balance by turning to round

 Well into shaping the base

 Sheer scraping the bottom of the bowl with the Crown Sheer scraper
 Hand sanding the bottom of the bowl
 Sanding with the Simon Hope Pro sander
 Facing of the top of the bowl
 Turning out the inside of the bowl
 Turning off the spigot with the bowl trapped between pressure plate and tailstock
 Leaving just enough spigot to support bowl
 Removing remaining bit of spigot with Axminster carver
 Buffing to a very high shine


 Doesn't he look pleased with himself and so he should
 Very well done Neil