We were treated to two great presentations last night at this months Nova Woodturners Guild meeting. The first was a sharpening presentation by Don Moore and the second was an information session on hollow turning by Dave Wilkins.

Don began the evening showing us the various facets of correctly sharpening our woodturning tools. Some of the information he imparted (and/or reminded us of) included:

This month’s meeting of the Nova Woodturner’s Guild was another fun and informative gathering for approximately 40 members. We were treated to an instructional segment on spindle turning and a ’show and tell’ of some great work by the Guild members.

Dave Wilkins conducted the spindle turning instruction, demonstrating the use of the skew and spindle gouge.

Working with just a scrap piece of wood, he turned it round and demonstrated the proper use of these two woodturning tools. Working with the skew he showed how the peeling cut can be used to remove a lot of material quickly and how the planing cut is used to smooth. He spoke of the ideal position of the skew on the wood, where using the middle of the blade is preferred. He validated this by showing us the riving action caused by using the heel of the blade and how using the toe easily causes a ‘catch’, the bane of the skew.

Continue reading 'Woodturning Spindles At The NWG'

We had another great presentation from master woodturner Don Moore at this month’s Nova Woodturner’s Guild meeting. His talk was on cutting bowl blanks from logs. He shared his experiences with tips, anecdotes and his usual light-hearted humor and banter.

I mentioned in a past post about Don that he owns, and lives on, a 450 acre woodlot. This has given him the opportunity to farm and cultivate his own wood ‘from the ground up’ and the experience needed to create quality wood for woodturning.

Continue reading 'From The Forest To The Lathe'

This month’s meeting of the Nova Woodturner’s Guild featured a presentation by Guild member Stuart Taylor who demonstrated how he creates his works of art that he simply calls ‘turned flowers’.

Working with a branch of wet wood he deftly created a unique, one-piece turning of a wooden flower. The wet wood allows the turning of the slender stem, along with a lot of skill.
Continue reading 'A Bouquet Of Wooden Flowers'

This months meeting of the Nova Woodturner’s Guild was held at Lee Valley and was the awards ceremony of the 2007 Woodturning Competition.

The Nova Woodturner’s Guild Woodturning Competition is held each year with the People’s Choice award being the Warman Castle Memorial trophy. The trophy is in memory of Warman Castle, who was a longtime member of the NWG and passed away a few years ago.

There were a total of 54 entries this year and all of them were astounding! Here, have a look:
Continue reading '2007 NWG Woodturning Competition'

The theme of the December meeting of the Nova Woodturner’s Guild was lathe and woodturning safety.

Ken Parsons, an experienced woodworker and wood turner who has been practicing his craft for over forty years, was the guest speaker. An expert in woodworking and cabinet making Ken also does custom production work in both spindle and face plate turning. He has learned a lot about safety in woodturning, often the hard way… as most of us do, unfortunately.

Ken covered a wide range of issues from toxicity in wood to proper clothing and various safety guidelines like:

1. Always wear a facemask when turning.
2. Keep the guards on your grinder.
3. Always use a dustmask when sanding.
4. Stand to the side when starting your lathe.
5. Ensure tightening tools are removed when starting your lathe.
6. Blow sawdust out of equipment, electrical outlets and heaters

This was a general talk that served as a reminder of the importance of safety in the workshop, something that we can never get enough of.

Back to the shop…

Tonight’s Nova Woodturner’s Guild meeting was on Lathe Maintenance and woodturner Don Moore gave us lots of tips!

1. Use a silicon spray on the lathe ways for ease of banjo adjustment.

2. File your toolrest smooth with a file and then sand with a fine emery paper to ease tool movement.

3. Round the edges of the skew. This will help when rolling over the tool when making beads, etc.
Continue reading 'Some Tips On Maintaining Your Lathe'

I went to a woodturning demo this evening hosted by Clive Owen from Robert Sorby Tools. He demonstrated a variety of tools and techniques including the Spindle Master, Texturing and Chatter tools and their Spiralling System.

Robert Sorby Tools is one of the world’s leading manufacturer of fine woodturning tools, woodcarving tools, chisels and lathe accessories. They are located in Sheffield, England.

The Spindlemaster is flat on one side and oval on the other which is supposed to make ‘dig-ins’ a thing of the past. Because of this it is quite popular with woodturners. It’s use appears to mimic both the skew and spindle gouge in it’s use.

The Texturing, Chatter and Spiraling tools offer a unique options for different decorative finishes to your work, including orange peel, striated and ribbed patterns.
Continue reading 'Sorby Tool Demonstration'