A toast to Steve Earis

Posted on 8. December 2015 by fuzzy

Last Saturday I went to meet Steve Earis, a fellow woodturner from Slough. This was in response to his announcement that he would have plenty of boxwood to share.

Now Slough isn’t exactly my backyard, it’s a one-way trip of over 100 miles. However, the promise of (almost) free boxwood in decent sizes was good.

When I arrived there (and after rousing Steve, who, like me, is not a morning person) we quickly got talking about all things wood. Let me tell you, this guy has a phenomenal knowledge of the various types of wood. He is also a strong supporter of (and contributor to) the wood-database, a site with tons of information about hundreds of useful types of wood.

He makes a living out of turning skittle sets for traditional bowling alleys, and in consequence has (literally) tons of sycamore and beech in his backyard. But there’s also a significant pile of all sorts, and an entire 6’x8′ shed with cured slabs of just about anything you care to mention.

I brought him a boot full of “mystery” wood, which he thinks is some kind of prunus, possibly a cherry. He might be right. In any case, he decided to keep most of that cherry, and in turn I was allowed to get myself some stuff from his “firewood” pile. I can’t even remember all the names of the species I walked away with, in addition to some fine piece of wenge. In fact, I think I left with more wood in the car than I arrived with. To be fair, though, I did pay him some money, too.

On the whole, I must say, Steve is one of the nicest guys you will meet in woodturning, and he makes some pretty decent bowls, too. So here’s a toast to Steve!

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Not strong enough

Posted on 8. December 2015 by fuzzy

Over the weekend I swapped a whole lot of “mystery” wood with Steve Earis (who, it must be said, is a most generous fellow wood turner). Amongst the pieces I took away were a few small half rounds of yew, some of which I converted promptly into rough turned bowls.

A cutoff from one of these pieces was too small for another bowl, but too big to just throw away. So I decided to make a winged box out of it. It all went rather swimmingly, until I decided that it was time to revers mount it, so that I could finish the underside of box and wings. I had deliberately left the box walls at about 5mm, thinking “will need some strength here, otherwise this is just going to fly off the chuck”.

When I tightened the chuck in expansion mode (so as not to leave any marks on the outside), I went just that little bit too far. Ominous sound -> visual inspection -> firewood. That’s how fast it goes. Not even the wonderwood yew was up for this.

Lesson learned. Next time I’ll use a jam chuck. Not brilliant either, and probably needs the tailstock up against the box bottom, but at least I will have a finished box.

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Gravity

Posted on 29. November 2015 by fuzzy

Last night I did some roughing out of various shapes, and as is often the case, needed to change jaws on the chuck. I usually find the set of jaws to go on, open the box and then use the lid to receive the jaws coming off the chuck.
Same procedure here. Except right at the end, I managed to toss the lid with the jaws onto the floor. 3 of them were quickly retrieved, but I could not find the 4th one.

At this point the shop floor was covered about 4 inches deep in shavings, and there were shavings everywhere in the workshop. I decided to have a bit of a cleanup, and filled a refuse bag with shavings. The missing jaw, however, was not there. Nowhere to be seen.

So I emptied the entire refuse bag onto the shop floor and searched through it. Still no luck. At that point I decided that I’d had enough, and went to bed.

This morning I put everything back in the bag, half-filled another, cleaned the work shop, in short I made quite an effort. But no jaw. OK, I thought, I must have missed it somehow. So I took the entire refuse bag to my wife’s horse yard, spread it out on the floor of an empty horse box, and sifted through it with a rake. No jaw.

Back home, some more cleaning of the workshop. Then a cigarette to get the brain cells working. A coffee. Nothing.

Eventually I got down on my belly, and with a search light looked under all the cupboards. And there it was. About as far from the lathe as it could have gone, and camouflaged behind a cupboard leg and some styrofoam.

Now I ask you: this is a piece of metal with an odd shape. It doesn’t roll, it cannot roll. It’s heavy. If I drop this from 1m onto your foot, you’re going to scream (I have on occasion). How did this thing end up in that remote corner? I haven’t the foggiest idea.

The only conclusion I can offer is that gravity must have been suspended in that very moment it fell out of the box.

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Ginormous lime bowl

Posted on 28. November 2015 by fuzzy

I think I posted a while ago that I managed to rescue some lime from a tree that was felled in my neighborhood. It’s all nicely cut up and stacked in the garden under a tarpaulin. One of the pieces went on the lathe, because I just couldn’t wait (it’ll be at least a year before the rest is anywhere near ready for turning).

I always wanted to a big natural edge bowl. I dislike the ones where the curvature of the tree makes the bowl almost unusable. Luckily enough this lime tree had some parts where the surface has almost flat, and I picked one of these pieces. Here’s the result:

lime-bowl-top

lime-bowl-bottom

It’s been lying around the lounge for several weeks now, and would probably be dry enough to finish turn it. Except there’s one teeny weeny problem: It has shrunk. Not a problem, you might say. It’s just smaller, so what?

Weeeelll, that’s not quite how it works. If you look closely you can actually see the problem in the pictures. The bowl has become elliptical. Now, all bowls do that when they dry. This one, though, has done it to such a degree that there is no way I can finish and still have a bowl. If I put this back on the lathe and turn it back round, there won’t be any side walls left.

Dough! All I can do now is to sand it by hand and accept the shape it has. Well, it was always meant to be a rustic bowl. It’s now just a little bit more rustic. What the hell!

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Busy, busy

Posted on 23. November 2015 by fuzzy

I have been so active in my workshop over the last 2 weeks that I haven’t really found the time to post anything here. Tonight I made a deliberate decision to step away and take some photographs of recent work. Most of them will end up in the various product galleries, so have a look over there.

And then there are pieces I made which will never have a photograph. They were made specifically for several people, not quite commissions (no money involved), but more along the lines of “thank you” for being helpful and supportive. I think it’s important that we all respond in kind to our support network, as otherwise wood turning can be a very lonely affair.

Oh, and I also made the decision to try and get a stall at the next Badminton horse trials. My wife is a keen rider, and so far we have been a few times as spectators, but last time I did notice that there were also numerous craft stands, with items quite unrelated to riding. Apparently it’s quite expensive, but then the crowds are huge, and most likely not the sort who are short of money (otherwise they wouldn’t be there in the first place), so probably a better place than most craft fairs. So now the game is on: I will need a stall with signage, and display shelves and all that, brochures, business cards, etc, etc, etc. And over the winter I will have to make loads of stock.

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