Category: Photos from meetings

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.

Our club meeting on the 27th June was all about working with wet or green wood. It was organized by John Cheadle, he did have 3 other turners booked to assist, however due to circumstances out with his control 2 of those had to call off. He did have assistance from Bill Munro and the evening went very well. John started by giving the members a talk on what wet wood was all about, ranging from how it grows, how to cut and dry it, how to store it during the drying process and how to use it . Once his talk was over John started to turn a wet log and encouraged others to have a go, Bill Munro did the same, both were more than happy to see several members having a go under their supervision. The following set of pictures along with some text will show how the evening went. The turn out was moderate but the meeting went well and was well received.

Due to the constraints of time neither bowl was finished at the meeting, this was not all that important, what was important was getting to know how to use wet wood. The feed back after the meeting was excellent, quite a few of the members were very interested in wet wood working in the future. The pictures for this presentation were taken by Alec Mutch.

Our club meeting on the 13th June 2019 was all about sharpening hand tools. There were 4 club members using a variety of sharpening devices , those were David Hay, David Hutcheson, Errol Levings and Alec Mutch. Each were demonstrating how to use their particular sharpening tool with tools brought in by many of the club members. Some had brought a whole selection of tools to sharpen or re-grind, this was exactly what we wanted to happen, they would be shown how to sharpen a particular tool then be asked to repeat the sharpening process themselves. There was a lathe set up with a block of wood for anyone to try after sharpening a tool, it was very well used. The turn out of club members was very good and they had for the most part taken part in the demonstrations.

If you want to see a larger picture and some text just click on the image. The pictures for this post were all taken by Mike Day.

The competition on the 30th May 2019 was all about making Hollow Forms. The entries for each category was a little disappointing, especially in the “Intermediate” category, the judges for the competition were David Hobson and Mark Sutton. Here is a summary of the competition entries and winners. In addition to the competition David had organized 5 turners to man the lathes whilst the judging was going on, these were, Colin MacKenzie making miniature bird houses, Mark Dale making a natural edged bowl, Dave Line working on a large laminated vessel, Bob Chisholm making pens and Geoff Potter working on a spalted beech bowl. For pictures and text on all of this see below.

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If you want to see a larger picture and some text of any of the above click on the picture. The range of items that can be made as “Hollow Forms” is far reaching, here are just a few but we hope they will give you inspiration to make one of your own.

This weeks meeting on Thursday 30th May 2019 is the competition on hollow forms, the meeting is being organized by David Hobson, he along with Mark Sutton will be the judges for the competition, we are looking for a large entry from all 3 categories and do remember there is a £25 first price for each of the 3 categories. In addition to the competition David has organized at least 3 turners to man the lathes whilst the competition judging is going on. Here is a reminder of the type of thing hollow forms covers.

Here is a reminder of the criteria.

Good luck and lets see plenty of entries.

Our meeting on the 16th May 2019 was all about making wooden fruits, the meeting was organized by David Hobson who also took part in the turning along with Alec MacLeod, Bob Chisholm, John Ruickbie and Richard Comfort. The meeting was well attended, it had quite a variety of ways in which wooden fruits could be made which made the evening even more interesting. Here is a summary of the evenings proceedings in both picture and print.

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If you want to see a larger picture and some text, click on any picture. We hope these picture and text gave you an insight into the making of wooden fruits, and it doesn’t stop there, a whole range of wooden fruits and vegetables can be made.

Our club meeting on the 2nd May 2019 was a showtime meeting, this is where the members are encouraged to bring and show any item they had made over the past few weeks, each one would get the opportunity to tell the members how they made any item and answer any questions from the members. The attendance for this meeting was a little smaller than usual and the number of members exhibiting was also a little smaller than usual, however the amount of items displayed was very good. The evening went well and the members got fully involved with all the item shown.

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If you want to see a larger picture along with some text, click any picture. Most of the pictures for this post were taken by Dave Line.

Our club meeting on the 18th April 2019 was organized by David Hay, his main theme for the meeting was how to make repairs in woodturning. David would be the main contributor to this type of work, however he had also arranged for 3 other members to be demonstrating their own things, these were David Hutcheson on a lathe, he would make a container for holding and storing sanding sealer, Mark Sutton also on a lathe, he would make a small Japanese style tea bowl, and Mark Dale was tasked with doing some hand carving and would make a large spoon or serving ladle. The turnout of members was very good and the evening went well, each demonstrator seemed to get a fair share of the attendees.

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For a larger picture and some text, click any picture.

Our meeting on the 4th April 2019 was mainly about the use of a bowl saver tool, this tool gives the user the ability to take more than 1 bowl out of a single blank making it a very useful tool especially if the blank is quite unusual or expensive. David Hay was the demonstrator and he did an excellent job of demonstrating exactly how it worked. In addition to the bowl saver demonstration, David had also arranged for 3 more turners to work the lathes, all of these turners were doing different things on the lathes, Colin MacKenzie was making a shallow platter in native Elm, Douglas Stewart was making wooden fruit, he did an apple in Yew wood and a pear in Cherry wood, David Hobson was making finials out of a piece of Mahogany. The turnout was very good, the evening started with the committee having one of their regular meetings prior to the start of the main meeting.

If you want to see a larger picture and some text click on any picture.

Our latest meeting on the 21st March 2019 was all about working with natural edges. There were 5 turners working the lathes, Bill Munro, John Ruickbie, Bob Chisholm, David Hutcheson and myself. The turnout for the meeting was very good and John Cheadle did all the introductions . The pictures were taken by Mike Day and Phil Moore.

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If you want to see a larger picture and some more detail, click any picture.