Our meeting on Thursday 28th March was organized by David Hobson, David had invited Mark Sutton to do a solo demonstration on some of Mark’s favourite subjects, mainly texturing and colouring. Mark is one of the remaining founding members of this club but due to work commitments he was not able to attend although he maintained his membership throughout.
Mark arrived and set up a disc of Sycamore roughly 250mm in diameter by 30mm thick, this he was going to make this into a shallow item using both texturing and colouring. The nature of what he was about to do was going to take quite a bit longer than the 2 hours allocated to him on the evening. He started by giving a full explanation on what he was going to do, this included how he held his work pieces on the lathe and what safety measures needed to be adopted. Later in the demonstration he showed and explained the tools he used to create the texturing and that was followed by what paints he would be using.
Susan Drew was our photographer for the demonstration and Susan captured all the salient parts of Mark’s demonstration to fully understand what was happening. Here are those photo’s with a bit of text added.
Picture 1, here is Mark Sutton giving his introductions to the meeting, here he is explaining how he mounts his work on the lathe. Picture 2, the disc of Sycamore now on the chuck being held by way of a face plate ring, Mark also brought the tailstock up to the workpiece explaining why he used a hollow revolving centre.
Picture 3, here Mark can be seen working the first side of his turning, he levelled out the face and rim then created a slightly tapered shape, he explained that not a lot of sanding was required at this stage as most if not all would be textured or painted. Picture 4, Mark had an ingenuous piece of kit that allowed him to mount his work in the tool rest banjo, this allowed him to have the work on a level or tapered axis that allowed him to work the piece with both the texture tools and the paints.
Picture 5, here Mark can be seen starting to use one of his texturing tools, he had gone to more detail about the texturing tools in both showing them and explaining what they could do, here he was using a Dremel type tool with high speed steel cutters. Picture 6, the texturing well underway, here he is using the pattern of the grain to great effect, you can see the texturing appear next to his hand.
Picture 7, after doing a couple of areas of texturing Mark used a soft sanding disc and a very light touch to give the textured areas a little sanding. Picture 8, the result of the texturing after it had been sanded was now clear to see.
Picture 9, Mark showed the members the paints he was going to use, these are Pebeo Acrylic paints and he was going to use 4 colours, black, then 2 shades of blue and finally a little gold applied on the sparing side. Here Mark can be seen applying the black base coat, these paints dry fairly quickly but to hasten it along he did make use of a heat gun being careful to not overheat the work piece. Picture 10, Now applying the first of the blue colour.
Picture 11, with all the textured areas now painted using the 4 colours, Mark then started to paint the remaining areas with the black only, applied fairly thickly and stippled to create its own texture. Picture 12, Mark then put the workpiece back on the lathe to texture the outer rim and edge, here he can be seen doing exactly that.
Picture 13,the rim texturing quite visible, also the variation in the colouring with the gold highlighting the work. Picture 14, this was as far as time would allow, Mark’s demonstration was over, it was well received by everyone there and he was given a good round of applause. The club appreciated Mark’s demonstration and hopes he will come again and do some more demonstrations.
I did ask Mark to complete the piece at home and to send us some pictures with a little text where required, he said he would do that, but an email to me today told me he would not get back to it before next weekend, if he sends some pictures of the finished piece I will post them on our web site.
Finally a very big thank you to Susan Drew for the excellent pictures.
Our next meeting is on the 11th April it is being handled by Alan Geddes and Alan has organized 4 more turners and himself to do an open session where the turners will be making something of their own design.