Meeting report from 23 April

Our demonstrator for this months meeting was Steven Gordon.

Steven demonstrated the art of turning flowers and a natural edge vessel from wet wood.
He had only just started his demo when it was interrupted by our vice-chairman, Sef Chambers,
Sef announced that we had a surprise visitor. This turned out to be a visit from the Lancashire Woodturners who had decided to personally deliver the engraved trophy which our club had won for the showcase piece at the Northern Woodturning Event (NWE), which had been held the previous weekend.

Thanks to Chris Parker who organised the event with the help of the AWGB’s representative, Eddie Elliot and the whole of the Lancashire Woodturners who put on a great show.
Hopefully we will have the opportunity to defend the trophy next year.

Now back to the demonstration:
Steven demonstrated how to manage the wet wood branches to produce flower like turnings with very fine stems.
The process consisted of slowly removing material using slicing cuts with bowl and spindle gouges to slowly reveal the form.

The branch was lightly support once the flower head had been created and work then commenced on producing the stem. This was done carefully usinf the edge of the spindle gouge, just of the point to slice the wood. expertly demonstrated by Steve.
When the stem and bulbous base were completed Steven used a ‘sanding butter’, a mixture of beeswax and mineral oil then demonstrated a wet sanding technique which kept dust to almost zero.

After the break Steven demonstrated an open end grain hollow form using different techniques to obtain the desired result.

Steve demonstrated to use of the spindle gouge to start the hollowing and then followed this with the Simon Hope 6mm cutter hollowing tool and then the use of round nose scrappers. He used a lamp to get the required thinness of the hollow form as he had done with the flower head.

An excellant demonstration with lots of information imparted.