|
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. 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. I just finished reading the biography of John Adams, the second president of the United States. If you read this book, you get a real sense of what people can truly believe in. So much so, that they would risk their lives for it. I think that the real battles that were fought for over freedom are so quickly forgotten as things turn into global environment. A global environment isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but individuality, compelling virtues and morals, equality and human liberties still need to be respected and remembered. July 4th isn’t just a day off, a picnic and some fireworks. The White House and Capitol Hill are the cornerstones of US democracy. I think that has been lost in translation as the years have passed. Reading about Adams brings this to mind. By the time he passed away, it was fifty years to the day the independence was officially marked on the calendar. By the time he passed away, a second generation of citizens were enjoying the freedom that he partook in to provide. When you look at the magnitude of what he and his contemporaries accomplished, that second generation was already living a life without oppression. A life that we still live today. We should remember what they did for posterity and honor that. Drawing from the biography, written by David McCullough, while in the office of the presidency, in a letter to his wife, John Adams wrote a simple “benediction” about the White House: “I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessing on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.” This is quite a profound blessing for such an important dwelling. So much so that it is carved into the fireplace in the State Dinner Room of the White House. Let’s hope that current occupant will bring justice back to this blessing because I don’t think the last did. 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. At last month’s wood turning meeting, we were given a bowl blank as an interactive project with the membership. The rules were simple:
To me, that is where the challenge started. Any one can turn a bowl. Many can turn a spectacular bowl. The trick is to make any otherwise ordinary bowl blank into something interesting or different. So how do you challenge yourself with an ordinary piece of wood to make something interesting? It was obviously going to be a combination of the shape, form and finish because white pine is rather plain. To me, just turning a bowl didn’t seem enough with a straight, plain grain. I had to push myself into an area that I had never tried before. I’ve seen elliptical turnings before. Some have done natural edge bowls that appear elliptical because how the bowl was turned from log that was used. I didn’t have that to start with though. My blank was a square block and I don’t have the resources to use an elliptical chuck. After confirming an idea with one of our talented turners in the club, I thought I’d try something that seemed crazy to me and rather advanced for my skill level. I figured that my skill level will never increase unless I try something to push myself to increase it. And that’s where I got the idea to do an offcentered turning. The idea is not something new, just something that I’ve never done. It was a fun exercise because for one of the first times I had try really think about what I was going to turn. Most of the time, I just look at the wood, try to find what I think are the flaws and how to turn them out, through it on the lathe and turn some sort of shape that I think looks pleasing. To me, this was complex. I had to plan the shape, how many times I had to flip the work piece and how I was going to keep the centers as the project progressed. Plus, I had to think of what finish I wanted to apply. I figured since it was white pine, it would put up with some abuse and soft enough to fix if it didn’t look right. Abuse is an understatement. During the whole process, it was turned and flipped multiple times. Waste blocks were glued and re-glued and hand sawn off. It even flew off once. In the end it was sanded, polished with Kiwi shoe polish, burnt with a blow torch and then finally finished with 4 coats of satin polyurethane with a 4-0 steel wool rub-down between each application. It is said that it’s the journey, not the destination. To me, this was an epic adventure. After all of that, I had to write down how I got there. Please comment on this blog entry if you’d like a copy of the document. Here’s the finished product, I hope you like it…
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…
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…
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:
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. 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. 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. I had only been out of the Army for about a year and was only 22. I was attending university and crossed paths with someone that had been in the Marines. He too, was starting university after the service. We would pass one another on campus, exchange greetings and that was about the extent of our acquaintance. We had no classes together, nor the same group of friends, just the bond of the service. One day, as I was walking across campus, our paths crossed and he said, “Have a great Veterans’ Day.” It felt weird, I was only 22, yet it lifted my day. Ever since then, I always take time to think about things on this day. I was in the Army and served at Ft. Polk, LA, ’88-’90, with 5th Infantry Division “Red Devils”, but there were and are people that have served far more and far harder than me. To them, I say, “Thank you,” with a major hoooorahhh! I was at Denny’s this weekend with my family and an elderly gentleman came in as we were leaving. He was wearing one of those hats that a navy guy wears that shows his ship’s name. I had an incredible urge to approach him and say thanks to him, but thought it would be inappropriate for some reason. Why? I don’t know. But, I kept the reflection inside and today he is in my thoughts. My great uncle is in my thoughts. He was one of the sternest men I’ve known in my life. You know, that hard looking Italian uncle that crush your hand when you shook with him. He was letting you know your place in the family. Well, at least that’s what I thought of him until I turned 18 and joined the Army. When he heard the news, he transformed into this completely different kind of uncle. He was a medic and had seen some really bad stuff in Europe after the invasion. I never heard those stories though. What I heard was how many times he made corporal and then was busted back to private. Apparently, he was quite the free spirit and prankster. Uncle Hugh passed away a few years ago. He’s greatly missed. I started to get to know him too late. There was an honor guard at his service. I have become privileged to be in possession of the flag that was on his casket. It hangs in our home as an honor to him. Today, especially, he is in my thoughts.
A childhood friend of mine was recently promoted to Lt. Colonel in the Air Force. This guy has it going. Sharp as a tack and has always been super smart, athletic and imaginative. He is the oldest of five brothers and sisters. Sailed through the Air Force academy. Became a fighter pilot. Married a bright girl from what I understand. He’s seen a lot of recent crap. Thanks goodness he’s fine and is back stateside for now. My thoughts are with him today. There are a few others to mention. My Ft. Polk roommates, Stefan, Ken and Terry – US Army. My college roommates, Rick and Chris – US Army. My dad’s friend, Jim – US Air Force. My great-great Uncle Salvatore, who ran up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt – US Army Calvary. My uncle and godfather, Uncle Marino – US Air Force. Some former work acquaintances, Pete – Royal Canadian Army and Terry – Royal Canadian Air Force. |
||
|
Copyright © 2010 - All Rights Reserved Analytics Plugin created by Jake Ruston's Wordpress Plugins - Powered by Roland TD9KX and company logos. |
||
