» Simcoe Woodturners’ Guild

Simcoe Woodturners’ Guild Website…

Chris — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 02:29:00 +0000

For those of you that have been following my blog, you can also follow the events of the woodturning guild of which I am a member.

simcoewoodturnersguild.com

I hope you enjoy seeing the things that our club does. This site is new so there will be more to post in the future of the activities and monthly demonstrations.

The Simcoe Woodturners’ Guild – Jun 08

Chris — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:30:00 +0000

Well, July is almost over and I’m just getting to the meeting round-up. The summer is passing by quickly and we will soon be back at it. But, let’s recap.

The June meeting had a flurry of activity. It was a “round robin” demonstration night. In all there were five quick demonstrations of various tools or skills that applied to woodturning. These types of meetings are really informative and help keep the attention of the membership, at least in my opinion.

Taylor Ledden started off the evening with a demo on a tool called the “Easy Rougher”. It is a shear scraper that has replaceable inserts. It is similar to the concept of how a machine lathe tool functions. When the tool is dull, you reposition or replace the cutter.

John Ellis demonstrated his method of putting spiral carvings into his turning. It’s easy to show than to write about, so I won’t bore you with the details. Maybe I’ll try to make some sketches of what his approach is.

Gilles Belanger’s demonstration was about the usefulness of waste blocks or glue blocks. There are two distinct advantages to waste blocks. The first is if the blank that you are working is thin, then you can add material to the blank and have some thing that a chuck can hold. The second is that with the waste block, you can turn the shape into the bowl without having to truncate a curve. In other words, you can overextend the flow of a curve and not have to worry about where it stops until you want to put the foot on the bowl.

Archie DeGaust wielded the might skew chisel for his demonstration. He showed how to use a skew as another means of roughing a spindle. He was so quick at it that he actually can rough with it faster than a roughing gouge. He also showed the basic features that can be cut with the skew and how not to be afraid of it.

Les Morgan ended the evening with his demonstration on texturing a turning by means of pyrography. Before Les picked up wood turning, he used to be an avid hand carver. His carvings were often embelished or accented with wood burnings. A nice wood burner is some that I may be interested in getting in the future to sign my work nicely on the bottoms.

In all, it was a productive and informative meeting that gave me some ideas to ponder over our summer break. Maybe, I will get a chance to apply some of these ideas in between the hot spells of the season.

The Simcoe Woodturners’ Guild – May 08

Chris — Thu, 22 May 2008 03:24:00 +0000

Well only a week late this time.

Ross Wilson from the Woodturners Guild of Ontario came up to give a nice demonstration for novice bowl turning. It was quite appropriate since our membership is starting to grow with many new turners.

Technique was the main emphasis. How to hold the tools properly, presenting the cutting edges to the wood and basic set up and safety were the focus of the demo.

Ross also gave some interesting insight on his approach to woodturning. He feels that every turning project should be viewed as a practice exercise. With this in mind, you can see the progress that you can make over time.

This makes sense. If you have an exotic block of wood, you could be more likely to worry about wasting it. You may getting nervous about the fact that you have paid for the wood and could end up with a disastrous error.

I think another point to ponder is not to put that exotic piece on right away, especially if you have been away from the lathe for a while. Throw something else on first to practice and warm up to remember your techniques. Then, when you’re ready, put that exotic piece and continue practicing.

I did that just last weekend. I had a wonderful log of cedar and practiced away. Since I thought it in those terms, I was more aware of what I was doing, where the project was going and how the shape and form were turning out.

We’ll see if I was successful when the rough turnings dry and I do the final turnings.

Until next time…

The Simcoe Woodturners’ Guild – Apr 08 – Catching up on the past few months

Chris — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 04:40:00 +0000

I’ve been pretty busy the past few months and haven’t had a chance to update the blog about the meetings for the past couple of months. So I’ll make it short.

In February, Fred Klapp braved inclimate weather and came to the meeting to demonstrate his method of box turning. Once the box was finished, he donated it to our monthly raffle table, which was raffled off at the April meeting.

Chris Darrah came to the club in March to demonstrate a new hollowing tool that he is importing from England. It’s a ring tool style cutter that has a replaceable insert. Since the insert is round, it is simply turned when the edge is worn. The idea seems to be a cool way to help eliminate the frequency of sharpening for end grain turning.

Michael Bonnycastle was the guest for April’s meeting. He came up from the Woodturner’s Guild of Ontario to demonstrate how to make homemade tools with various materials that are already available around the home shop. He also showed us how to do some silver soldering of cutting tips on o the end of a tool and then grind it to the desired shape.

In all, the meetings were as informative as ever.

Next month, I hope to post my meeting information sooner.

Until then…

The Simcoe Woodturners’ Guild – Jan 08 meeting

Chris — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 04:17:00 +0000

Texturing was this month’s demonstration. Rick had the pleasure of displaying his talent again as our demonstrator. He stepped through various ways of texturing and decorating turnings.

Some species of wood are rather plain. These species respond well to additional design elements.

Some example that were shown were:

Applying a stain or dye
Woodburning accents
Beading tools
Texture and chatter tools
Wire wheel attached to a drill
Guitar wire used for burning in lines.

Our second member participation activity was also introduced tonight. Les Morgan brought in pile of 6′” wood blocks. The activity is to turn whatever strikes us and bring it to the next meeting. From there we will let the project evolve into trying various finishing techniques and maybe have a small scale design competition.

This should prove to be an interesting exercise.

The Simcoe Woodturners’ Guild – Dec 07 meeting

Chris — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 03:50:00 +0000

Great meeting last night. A new board was elected.

Our club president, Rick Biggs, demonstrated how to make Christmas tree ornaments using small hollow turnings and adding finials to the top and bottom of the hollow turning for extra design details.

It was also a big step forward me last night. It was the first time that I got enough courage to bring and display some turnings on the “Show & Tell” table. After getting a turning lesson from Rick a few weeks ago, I learned many new techniques that have given my turning abilities a quantum leap.

I still have a long way to go, but my projects are actually turning out to be something that I can measure the progress of my skills. The critique of the “Show & Tell” was also helpful and encouraging.

Thanks to all for the great advice that was given.

The Simcoe Woodturners’ Guild – Nov 07 meeting

Chris — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 03:03:00 +0000

Yesterday was the November meeting to the Simcoe Woodturners‘ Guild.

The “Show and Tell” was interesting this month. It displayed a demonstration of many different style and design thoughts dealing with a poplar block that was handed out at October meeting. It was nice to see how everyone interpreted the given block of wood and every one came with some different. A nice mix of design ideas

Craig Laing also demonstrated his method of bowl turning. His method was a nice contrast to the methods displayed by Gilles Belanger and Arnold Veen in the previous two months.

Turning smocks and hats were available this month also. Cheers to Aubrey Ford for the excellent job and coordination. They look top notch and should be fun to use.

Just a reminder that we meeting on the 2nd Tuesday of the month. Feel to drop a line if you’re interested in the location.

The Simcoe Woodturners’ Guild – Apr 07 meeting

Chris — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 02:54:00 +0000

Another great meeting this month.

I have to pat myself on the back for donating a few pieces of Russian Olive to the raffle table. Many members commented on the pieces. I found it useful to listen in and get ideas of how it turns, how it reacts and what safety measures need to be taken with it. One of our members has an allergy to the wood.

Thanks to Taylor Ledden for the presentation on turning footed bowls. His demonstration used Spalted Maple to make a 2-piece winged bowl. One piece was turned to be the upper bowl and a second piece was turned to be the foot. The upper bowl has a recess in it’s “bottom” and the lower piece has a tenon in it’s “top”. The two are then glued together giving the upper bowl it’s foot.

Taylor’s work can be viewed at www.turningsbyledden.ca

An enjoyable evening was had by all in attendance

The Simcoe Woodturners’ Guild – Mar 07 meeting…

Chris — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 03:18:00 +0000

Tonight’s meeting was really informative.

One of our members, Don McNiven, gave an interesting presentation on a method of making bowl sculptures. By slicing a bowl into strips and gluing them back together, he has produced some inspiring forms that take bowl making down an interesting road.

He has applied his skills of bowl making and engineering into rather uplifting art forms that are rugged in construction but delicate in appearance. He isn’t afraid to mix media either. Out of necessity and for contrast, he combines wood and bondo (who would have thought?) to get to a place that might otherwise be unachievable with just wood alone.

It really got the mind racing.

Some members brought some really great pieces of wood for the taking. I got a few burrs and a nice big bowl blank. I only hope that I can get it to fit on my lathe. The big lathe still eludes me.

I won a raffle again and got a piece of box elder and a piece of yellow birch. I still deciding what I want to make with all of these great pieces now.

Thanks to Don also for showing me how to grind the new tools. Now I can go wear them out again.

For those that are interested, feel free to send me an e-mail and I can provide some details.

The Simcoe Woodturners’ Guild – Feb 07 meeting

Chris — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 02:56:00 +0000

For those that braved the snow storm, it was a good meeting. A guest from the Woodturners’ Guild of Ontario demonstrated how quick and easy it is to do spindle turning for coffee table legs using a board template as the only means of repetition. Since he has been turning for over 60 years, some thing tells me that he didn’t even need that.

It was the first meeting that I attended and as beginner’s luck goes, I won a raffle. A nice piece of spalted maple and an issue of Woodturning, a magazine published in the U.K.

For those that are interested, feel free to send me an e-mail and I can provide some details.