The focus of this month’s meeting of the Nova Woodturners Guild was the club’s upcoming 2010 Woodturning Competition.

We were fortunate to have John Macnab speaking on the competition preparation, form and artist’s intent.

John recently won this year’s Lieutenant Governor’s Master Arts Award for his piece entitled CSDC 3-8 (Compound Spiral Double Cone No. 3, 8 Sided). This sculpture is a 25-foot long spiral sculpture turned from red spruce. It is best described as, “Suspended horizontally, it presents a floating form of lyrical grace and simplicity that belies the complexity of its production and its remarkable cross-disciplinary origins.”

John is a self-taught woodturner and machinist and his beautiful turned sculptures have been shown in galleries across North America. Combining his woodturning background and his engineering skills he invented a 20-foot vertical lathe that enables him to turn large spiral sculptures. Here’s a photo of John at work at the lathe in his studio:

Continue reading 'NWG – On Competition Preparation'

Here’s a collect of sixteen more wine stoppers that I did recently. Again, Again, most of them were done with the popular flame style.

They were done in a variety of woods including Zebrawood, Red Palm, Thuya, English Walnut, Cocobolo, Pau Rosa, Cherry Burl and Maple.

Here’s some closeup photos showing the different stoppers. This photo shows a Zebrawood, an English Walnut, a Cherry burl and a Red Palm stopper:

Continue reading 'More Wine Stoppers'

After racking my brain for weeks trying to think of something to make for the Atlantic Woodworkers Christmas Toy Drive the idea to make some magic wands popped into my head. I was trying to think of something for kids that were a bit older and with the big interest in the Harry Potter series over the past few years this certainly filled the bill.

The wands are made of Ash, approximately 15″ long and the handles are dyed with purple, blue and turquoise leather stain. Several coats of wipe-on poly were applied and then buffed with some carnauba wax.

I wire-burned some accent rings which helped to keep the stain, which is quite runny, into it’s particular section of the handles. Here are some closeups:

Continue reading 'Putting The Magic Into Christmas'

This month’s meeting of the Atlantic Woodworkers Association was our Annual Wooden Toy Drive and Christmas Social. The meeting was held in the seminar room of our local Lee Valley store.

The meeting is centered around the toys that the members have made and brought in for donation to the Salvation Army for distribution to families less fortunate.

As with year’s past it was a great showing of woodworking skill and support for such a worth-while cause. There were toys for girls and boys, both young and old. In fact, there was everything from cars to cradles!

After a short introduction and welcome by the club chairman to the members and their guests the meeting began with the highpoint of the evening, the Show and Tell. The Christmas Show and Tell is always fun with the members telling of all the fuss and foibles of getting their toys done, and on time! There’s also some great tips to take home to apply to toy making next year.

Here’s a few photos of some of the toys that were made this year:

Continue reading 'AWA Christmas Toy Fest And Social 2009'