Category: General News

Our turning competition on 22nd August 2019 was all about spindle turning, this is the system where most of the turning is done between centres, i.e. between the headstock and tailstock. The competition was organized by Colin MacRae, the judges for the competition were Colin MacRae and Jim Kelman. The entries for the Novice category were good, as were the entries for the Experienced category, but the Intermediate category still comes up short on entries. In addition to the competition, Colin had arranged for 4 more of the lathes to be in use during the judging. These were Bill Munro, David Hobson, Dave Line and David Hutcheson, each of these turners would be doing something different. A summary of the competition and the free turning follows in the form of a selection of pictures and some text, pictures by Mike Day and Alec Mutch.

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To see a larger picture along with a little text, click on any of the pictures.

Our meeting on the 8th of August 2019 was mostly to do with threads in woodturning, James Wares was using hand held thread chasing tools and I was using a traditional tap and thread box system. Both have their own merits, the hand held thread chaser tools are first class for making fine threads on things like small trinket boxes, where as the tap and box system is very good for producing threads on things like standard lamp connections or the bases for table lamps. In addition to the threading going on a 3rd turner, Errol Levings was taken in to work another of the lathes, Errol was to make some Harry potter wands. A summary of the meeting follows in the gallery below. This meeting was organized by Colin MacRae.

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If you want to see a larger picture and some text just click on any picture. All the picture for this post were taken courtesy of Mike Day.

Saturday 27th July 2019 is our annual all day woodturning event. There will be 3 turners working the lathes, the event has been organized by John Cheadle. There will be some refreshments available and he has also arranged for a woodturning supplies business to be there selling items relevant to the woodturners.

• Date Saturday 27th July 2019.
• Venue HWC premises in Munlochy.
• Timetable.
• 0950 Hours Introduction by John Cheadle.
• 1000 Hours Demonstration by Alec Mutch.
• 1145 Hours Short break for refreshments.
• 1200 Hours Demonstration by Gary Lowe.
• 1345 Hours 2nd Refreshments break.
• 1400 Hours Demonstration by Mark Sutton.
• 1600 Hours closing remarks by John Cheadle.
• Entry
• Members – Free.
• Guests – £5.00.
• Catering
• Free tea and coffee.
• Bring your own pack lunch.
• Raffle as usual.
• Sale of wood and equipment .

The demonstrations will be a natural edge bowl made by Alec Mutch, a textured dish made by Gary Lowe and a Diptych or Triptych made by Mark Sutton, for those unfamiliar with what a Diptych or Triptych is, they are a set of 2 or 3 associated artistic works.

We are looking forward to seeing you all here , a good turnout is expected.

Our club meeting on the 11th July 2019 was organized by John Cheadle, he arranged for the club to have George Burgess come and do a talk on how and where to source wood for turning. George had been a chairman of this club in it’s early days but said he had not been to the club for the past 5 years, although a lot of those present then were no longer members, the present members were more than happy to see him return to the club if only to do the talk. George started his talk by saying that the easiest way to get blanks was to buy them from a specialist wood supplier catering for the woodturner, the down side of this was that the blanks can be quite pricey. He then offered alternatives on how and where to get suitable wood. He suggested going to your local joiners shop and offering to buy offcuts, whilst these would be dry and useful the choice might be quite limited, another approach could be your local sawmill, here the problem might be how dry they were, your own firewood pile might reveal something, get in touch with any local tree surgeons, again there could be a problem with how dry the wood is. Old fallen trees, go and ask if you can remove some of it. Finally, green timber, easier to work and usually free but time would be required to dry it or working it wet.

The next part of George’s talk was all about cutting and drying the timber. he discussed the various methods of cutting like through and through and quarter sawn plus natural edged. He showed some pictures of an Alaska Mill that he had used for milling boards, this is a chain saw mill and went on to discuss the use of the mill including all the safety aspects. He then showed a log of wood that had a few shakes on either end and went on to discuss what was happening with this log.

His next subject was drying the timber, how to store it, where to position it when drying, how long it would take and to allow a good air flow round the wood. He also discussed the possibility of spalting your own wood and how that comes about. He mentioned the importance of looking for the pith (the centre of the growing rings, and not the centre of the log) that this should be cut through in all occasions. His final talk was all about the difference encountered in different woods like fruit woods being difficult to dry without any degrade and how to choose the best bits from a plank or log, he had several diagrams that he used to show exactly where a bowl would have come from a tree. George ended by asking for any questions from the members, several questions were asked and answered.

The talk ended with the Vice Chairman John Cheadle thanking George for his excellent talk. It was appreciated by all of our members with some individual discussions taking place with George for some considerable time after the talk was over.