Author: Alec Mutch

Our meeting on Thursday 11th November 2021 was a demonstration by George Burgess, George was to make as he called it a “Banana Bowl” now if your are wondering what exactly he meant by “Banana Bowl” well it’s a bowl made from a log split in half forming a “D” shape then turned, what makes it into a “Banana Bowl” is the fact that the half log is 3 times longer than it is wide. The wood George chose for the bowl was a piece of Laburnum, it’s a good wood to work, pale olive green heartwood with pale cream colour to the sap wood, as it dries the cut ends turn a dark chocolate brown, but the pale green colour will be present even after it’s dried and worked, it does however eventually turn dark brown from the effects of UV light, a process that effects all woods, some more dramatically than others.

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Start time 6.45pm.

Our meeting this week, Thursday 11th November 2021 is a demonstration by George Burgess, George is going to demonstrate making a “Banana Bowl”, this is a bowl that is longer than the diameter usually made from a piece of branch wood, however I will leave that to George to explain when he comes to do his demonstration.

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Our Meeting on Thursday 28th October 2021 was a demonstration by David Ross on making an ornamental hanging using a Sea Urchin in his design. These are very fragile items and we were all intrigued to see how David was actually going to go about this.

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I thought you might like to see what we have done with our club premises as a result of the Covid pandemic. Our club premises needed some upgrading to reduce the possibility of Covid being transmitted to or by our club members. This included having to improve the ventilation, install a full dust extraction system to all 5 lathes, set up a sanitising station, keep very accurate records of attendees for track and trace if it were ever needed, we also managed to increase the space between each lathe by repositioning the machines, this allows us more space for the members who are observing the turners. We also did some general housekeeping by giving all the floors a fresh coat of paint.

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Our meeting this week, Thursday 14th October was a demonstration by Errol Levings on the subject of texturing your work pieces. Errol brought a few different texturing tools to the demo along with some pieces he had made earlier. He went on to explain what the tools did and what he used to create some of the items he had on show. He told everyone that he wasn’t going to make anything in particular, the demo would be more benefit to everyone he he just showed what the tools can do on various pieces of wood. Errol went on to say this was very much a learning curve for everyone including himself.

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Our next meeting on the 14th October 2021 is a demonstration by Errol Levings on the use of various texturing and spiralling tools. These are some of the most interesting tools to have, they can create some amazing results once you master the use of these tools, they come in various guises, used to create texture to your work, some come with various interchangeable parts to create various spiral effects, and the most basic of these is the chatter tool.

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Our meeting on Thursday 30th September 2021 was a Showtime meeting, this is a meeting where all our members were invited to show anything they had made over the past few weeks, as this was the first Showtime meeting we were able to have since the shut down in March 2020 we extended the showtime to anything they had made that they still had.

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Its showtime once more, and the first showtime we have arranged after the re-start of our regular meetings. The purpose of the showtime meetings is to let other members of the club see what you have been up to since the shut down, as the time closed was about 18 months you must all have plenty of things you have made over that period of time, now is the time to share them with the rest of our members. There is no limit on the amount of items you could bring to the showtime, we will assess how many each person can show once we see the number of items being shown. It would be good if during the showing of your work you could give the members a commentary on what you made.

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Our meeting on Thursday 16th September 2021 was a demonstration by John Ruickbie, John was to make a bandstand clock using some slats from whisky barrel staves. John had brought along a finished example along with some of the stave material, he explained that these were not square nor were they straight and that they had also been scorched on the inside, all of this presented some problems when mounting them on the lathe, John had made up some jigs to help overcome some of these problems. John also knew the time allocated for the demonstration would not be enough for the entire project to be completed so he did some of the preparation work at home and would show and explain how it was done as he went through the procedure.

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