This month’s meeting of the Nova Woodturners Guild was both an eye popper and very educational! The Show and Tell session offered a bevy of beautiful work from several members and Dave Wilkins took us on a review of spindle turning tools and techniques.

Dave’s presentation gave us an excellent overview of the various tools available for spindle turning including chucking systems. He combined this with instruction on their use and maintenance.

Whereas Dave’s previous spindle turning demo focused mainly on the skew and spindle gouge tonight’s demonstration touched on these tools but also introduced the traditional forged ‘Continental’ gouge, explained the various sharpening angles and profiles of the these tools, showed the difference in the ‘spring’ created with the them, compared the pros and cons of both the Nova Live Center and the Oneway Live Center and turned a captured ring using only the skew.

Continue reading 'Learning Spindle Turning At The NWG'

In the last post I mentioned that I turned a hollowed vessel using the Rolly Munro Articulated Hollower so I guess that I should tell you a bit more about the turning.

This piece was turned as a traditional shaped vase and is made of Spalted Maple. It stands at about 5 1/2″ tall and is about 4″ in diameter at it’s widest and 1 1/2″ at it’s base.

This is a project that really came ‘out of the blue’. It was turned from a beautiful piece of wood that my buddy, Dave Wilkins, brought with him when he dropped by the shop the other day. The piece of wood was not the only surprise that day as, like I mentioned earlier, he also brought along his ‘Rolly’ for me to try. What better way than to try it out than on this piece of Spalted Maple?! Got the wood, got the Rolly, gotta turn! What else could I do?!

The piece is finished with a bit of Tung oil and shined with the Beall Buff System.

Here are some more photos showing the different sides of the piece:

Continue reading 'A Surprise Spalted Maple Vase'

Thanks to my good friend, David Wilkins, I had a chance to try out the Rolly Munro Articulated Hollower recently and let me say from the outset that I was very impressed with it! It cut quickly, left a clean finish and it was comfortable to hold. I was able to turn a hollowed vase in record time and, well, in short, having one of my own has now moved to the top my wish list!

Here you can see the handle, the shaft, the heads, sharpening jig and wrenches that comes with the set:

Rolly Munro spent over ten years experimenting with designs for hollowing tools that has culminated in this fine tool.

It has been designed around the Technatool hollower cutting tip, which is coupled with a stainless steel depth gauge. The cutter head has an adjustable hood to control the depth of cut. When dull, the round cutter is simply rotated to reveal a fresh edge. The cutter can also be easily resharpened by rotating it on a grinder using the supplied jig. There are 3 cutters supplied.

The articulated head allows for a multitude of configurations to get into even the toughest of areas. You can use it alone or you can combine it with the short 1-1/4″ straight linkage and the longer 2-3/4″ curved linkage for a variety of angles.

The 5/8″ diameter steel tool shaft is just over 16-1/2″ long and the hollow aluminum handle is about 19-1/2″ long by 1-1/2″ in diameter. There is a knobbed screw on the handle that allows easy control of the back and forward motion as well as provide a visual reference of the cutter position within the hollow form.

Here’s a video showing it in use (The quality of the video isn’t that great but it does get better as it goes along):

Continue reading 'The Rolly Munro Articulated Hollower'

This month’s get together of the Atlantic Woodworkers Association brought us back to our regular meeting place at the Home Depot for a special presentation on pen turning by our newly past chairman, Cecil Canam. In addition to other facets of woodworking Cecil is an avid woodturner and is quite passionate about turning pens. We certainly saw why tonight!

Cecil is also a member of the Nova Woodturners Guild. He turns bowls, Christmas ornaments, bottle stoppers and more. He says that very little scrap goes to waste around his shop!

The presentation started with an overview of safety considerations while turning with emphasis on wood toxicity and glue fumes. This was followed by a required tool list and an explanation of each tool’s use.

The process for turning a pen was clearly explained from choosing the wood and the pen kit style to the actual turning and finishing, and then finally putting all the pieces together, both literally and figuratively. This was done while turning pens so it was easy to see, relate to and understand each step.

Cecil turned several pens during his presentation including this Sierra style pen made out of Rosewood:

Continue reading 'Passionate Pen Turning At The AWA'