After working in the I.T.  industry for about 36 years I decided to retire just after my sixtieth birthday. I started in the computer industry as a hardware engineer fixing computers that would fill a very large room! By today's standards a computer with 8MB of disc and 256KB of memory, i.e. the type I worked on, is very small fry indeed! I eventually became interested in software and spent the last 25 or so years as C programmer  working on various flavours or Unix and Linux.

Although I've only been woodturning for about 4 to 5 years my interest was sparked when in my early teens we were staying in a B&B in Weymouth. The owner of the house had a small woodturning workshop and I was particularly fascinated by some of his turning which I now know to be called "segmented turning".

I'm a great hoarder, much to the annoyance of my wife, and have been collecting odds and ends of wood every time something was to be discarded from our house. I'm slowly working through this stock of wood and some of the items made from it can be seen below. Other of my turnings and my other interests can be found on my own website.

Derek is secretary of the Wight Woodturners.

This pair of goblets have teak (from an old table) as their main timber and horse chestnut as the light wood in the bowl & holly in the stem & base.	This goblet is constructed from teak (from an old table), walnut (from some old shelves) & some unknown light coloured hardwood from an old chair.
This platter is made from some very nicely figured apple. The wood, which I've had for some time, was rotted and cracked in various places I therefore ran it through the bandsaw and matched up the 4 pieces avoiding the many defects. It is 23 cm dia x  and 4 cm high and is finished with sunflower oil which really brings out the colours.	This bowl is constructed from five 16 segment rings and a solid base all of walnut, which was salvaged from some old shelves. The feature ring contains a checker board pattern which does not go all through the ring.
	Click on the above images to obtain an enlarged view.
This bowl made in September 2010 (8.75" dia by 4.5" high) is one of a matched pair. Each bowl consists of 6 rings plus a solid base. Each ring contains 12 segments and the feature ring has alternating patterns. The total number of pieces of wood in each bowl is 374. The bulk of the wood is oak (my friends old flooring again) the dark wood in the patterns is  walnut and the lighter coloured wood could be teak. Click on the image to obtain a view of the pair of bowls.	This bowl made in October 2010 (approx 21 cm dia by 4 cm high) is made from oak faced flooring obtained from a local flooring contractor. The effects from the oak layer (about ¼" thick) and the birch ply which provided the bulk of the flooring panels are every bit as good as I hoped they'd be when I was layering up the cut floor sections (each being about 22 cm long by about 5 cm wide).
This very shallow dish, the result of a pleasing experiment, is built from various odd left-overs from other projects and is 15.25 cm dia x 2.5 cm high, I'm not sure how many pieces or types of timber the bowl contains. I was so pleased with the result that I entered it in the village annual show and it won first prized for a wooden item	These dishes are made from my stock of ply backed oak faced flooring boards, the one on the left has birch ply whilst the one on the right has a mixture of pine & birch ply. I'm quite intrigued by the patterns one can get by using different arrangements in the construction.
This pair of ladies were made  as entries to our March 2009 competition. The one on the left has a hat and base made from cherry and the figure is made from blackthorn. Whilst the one on the right is has the hat and base made from apple, whilst the figure is made from cherry. They are both 28cm high.	This bowl (made July 2010) is mainly made from oak which had previously seen life on a friends floor. I thought I'd try something different from my usual segmented items and this has worked out quite well. It took much less effort than segmented items and the look is very effective. Returned the completed bowl to friend who gave me the oak in the first place.