Copyright © 2019 Burnham-
Meeting Reviews
February 2019 -
January 2018 -
February 2017 -
April 2016 -
January 2016 -
November 2019 - Colwin Way
We were delighted to welcome Colwin back to our club and he offered us a number of demo alternatives on which we voted as follows …
Pod
This was a greenwood turning project which had us on the edge of our seats as the thickness of the stem got increasingly narrow!
- Starting with an about 3” diameter wet log of unknown origin mounted between centres and with the lathe at about 1200rpm Colwin removed the bark up to about 3” and turned a spigot.
- Remounted on the spigot and the front face cleaned up the centre was opened out to a depth of about 30mm and then the outside shaped to match to create translucence using a hand torch to check progress.
- The tailstock was then re-
introduced with paper packing for protection, bark removed and the stem diameter carefully reduced using the bottom edge of a bowl gouge.
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- The base was shaped with a spindle gouge
- To part off the base, remove the tailstock to prevent ‘whiplash’ and support lightly by hand on the stem
Pendant
Colwin explained that he uses a combination of wood and resin to make attractive pendants and lights etc. He showed examples of some blanks and the processes involved. However, to demonstrate the making of a pendant with an offset hole he used a laburnum blank of about 50mm diameter and 4mm thickness which had been sliced on a bandsaw.
- The blank had a small beech spindle hot glued to one side and this was mounted in appropriate sized chuck jaws
- The outside edge was turned down to round with a small gouge with the lathe running at 1800rpm
- The front face was then tidied up with a slight convex curve, scraped with a skew and then sanded 150,240,400,600
- The pendant was then reversed and mounted in a set of wood jaws made to take a variety of diameters and the beech spindle turned away
- This side of the pendant was then shaped, scraped and sanded as above
- After remounting on offset jaws an 8mm hole was drilled completely through and then the hole opened out with a bowl gouge and sanded
- Reverse onto the offset jaws and use the same 8mm drill to centre the other side, open out the hole and sand as before
- Finally buff up at about 1400rpm
Christmas Carousel
The final demonstration was the making of a Christmas Carousel. Colwin showed the making of one of each of the components -
The dimensions and construction guide were fully described in a 2-
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The speed with which Colwin demonstrated the making of the parts was breathtaking!. I suspect that duplicating the parts to get a matching set was possibly not as quick and like all such tasks, accuracy in preparing the blanks is key.
Thanks to Colwin for a fascinating and very instructive evening from a superb demonstrator.
David Langan