9 February 2010

This meeting (delayed from January due to the bad weather) was the first in our new format of yearly competitions, i.e. one month we put on an in-house turning demonstration to be followed two months later by the competition to produce whatever had been made at the previous demonstration.  The subject of Roger's demonstration was some "thin wet turned" flowers.

Roger explained that to obtain the best results you really need to start with freshly felled timber with diameter of approximately 2 to 3 inches, to this he added that fruit wood usually produced the best results. Unfortunately the only fruit wood of suitable diameter that Roger had available was some plum which was really too dry. However he soldiered on none the less by producing two examples of very thin walled flowers.

Turning is commenced by forming the inside of the flower to whatever shape you feel looks good.		A light, with the beam directed into the centre of the work, helps see how the internal work is progressing.	Once the internal shape is complete, then work starts on the outside. Here you really need the light and be using green wood. As you remove  timber from the outside the  light will eventually "glow"  through the ever thinning wall. You should aim to get an even colour down the length of the wall.

Because the plum that Roger started with was really too dry then the glow of the light didn't really show through the wall of the flower.	Fortunately David brought a long some apple which had been felled only days before the meeting. Although it was a bit larger than Roger would have liked it did allow him to turn another flower where the light came into its own and you could clearly see the glow appear as the wall thinned down.	Here we see the results of Roger's demo, i.e. 2 flowers from the over dry plum and 1 from David's very wet apple.

We look forward to seeing a large selection of (spring?) flowers at our 9th March meeting.