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 todays 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.

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.
This bowl is made from 6 rings with all bar the top one being made from spalted holly and blackthorn. The top ring is made from oak with a band of mahogany running through it. The bowl is 19cm dia. x 7.6 cm high and is made from a total of 176 pieces.	This bowl is made from holly and some wood reclaimed from some old draws, this wood is teak like. The bowl has three sixteen segment rings and the bottom is made from eight segments. The bowl is  21.5 cm dia. x 5 cm high.
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	This platter has an oak base (salvaged from an old kitchen cupboard door)  with the oak  also surrounding the pattern. The pattern is constructed from apple and spalted holly rectangles with each being surrounded with mahogany strips (salvaged from some old flooring). The platter is just under 23.5 cm dia x 2.5 cm high and contains 184 pieces.
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 dish is made from very nicely figured apple and measures 18 cm dia x 5 cm high.