Friday, August 31, 2012

Well this has been an eventful week for sure, yesterday the car broke down and I discover it requires a brand new starter motor, these weigh in at about £140, naturaly I was absolutely thrilled with this event! Anyway, the enforced hiatus to my travelling meant I could without a qualm spend the day with turning related activities. Soe short while back I was fortunate enough to be given a nice selection of various logs by one of my neighbours, Ed, among these was a largeish length of Sycamore that had spent about a year in an open air stack, leading to it slow decay and the inevitable spalting of the wood, spalting is the fine black lines that create such interesting patterns in this type of wood. One unfortunate side effect though is that the wood can also go "Punky" a term used to describe the soft, corky kind of nature of the decayed timber, this can make the wood hard to finish as the fibres tend to be very short and can tear or pul out easily during turning, however, if it isn't too bad, some judicious use of the sander can usually sort it out. So, having slice a couple of bowl sized logs off this piece I set to work mounting in the lathe and commenced to turn, wondering what would come out and apart from the fact I knew it would be a natural edged bowl, I had no plan, what did finally result though was this nice centrepiece pedastal bowl. So not such a bad day after all.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Today I fixed up a lot of gaps and holes in the shed as learned that my graphic design job was finishing at the end of September, so there goes another source of income, and it looks like I will be spending a fair bit of time in the workshop on the lathe. I also took out from under the workbench a piece of wood I have been waiting 20 years or more to turn, it is a piece of Thuya Burr, very odd wood that grows underground on the roots of an odd conifer in Morroco, first item I made is this little natural edged pot.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

A begining.

Although this is not really a begining, I have been turning for a good many years, this is the begining of my career with a proper setup and the kit to be able to do the things I always wanted to do, plus I am interested in keeping a record of my progress.