January 2007 - Club Meeting

Club Meeting Gallery - 31st January 2007

Tonight Ian Hooker gave us the benefit of his keen wit and finely honed tools with a demonstration of how to turn a laminated vase. He started with an ash blank which he'd laminated on all four sides with slices of a contrasting coloured timber. The resulting spaces on each corner were also filled with a light coloured wood. Can't visualise it? Well it looked something like this:

End View

Side View

Got the idea? Good. Ian then bored a hole down the centre of the blank then turned the blank between centres. The eventual shape grew from a combination of the arrangement of the timbers plus the shape of the vase.

Unfortunately, Ian, perfectionist that he is, decided not to actually apply a finish to his vase. This was particularly due to the fact that the ash (which was at the centre of the blank) was a little pitted and he hadn't been able to produce a nice smooth finish worthy of the furniture polish which he uses. That's the trouble with wood - start turning it and you never know what you'll find under the surface.

Ok, now here are some pictures of Ian working on his masterpiece . . .

Head down and stuck into the task at hand!

We had an interesting collection of Show 'n' Tell items this month too. The theme was "A Lidded Box" but folks who have other items to bring are more than welcome to bring theirs along too. Take a look and see what you think -

Well I don't think any of us expected a traction engine but it was great to see it. Fred Dibnah would have proud! There was quite a number of noteworthy items from Clive's egg-shaped ash box with blackwood finial and base to Brian Oram's laminated lidded vessel. I can't remember the timbers he used but it was particularly striking. There were various other offerings, as you can see - one of them just large enough to contain a £1 coin!

Here's another unusual offering, this time from Ken Crittle (if I've got the name wrong, please put me right - we're still a new club and I'm afraid I haven't got the old grey cells around everyone's name yet). Anyway, Ken showed us how he marked a log into vertical sections, cut it and then turned the sections into candlesticks. So what's unusual about that? Well, he didn't actually turn the bases so you could fit all the candlesticks together into their original configuration within the log. thus making them into a set. He made a set for some relatives who live in different parts of the world and, theoretically, when they all come together they could bring their candlesticks and they would all fit together again. A little difficult to explain and to visualise so here's a picture.

You can see a log in the background which Ken had marked out to demonstrate the technique. Presumably he's going to make another set.

In the foreground is a set of six. Look carefully at the irregular shaped bases and imagine them all fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle and forming the original shape of the log.