Really Wild Food Festival at the Bishops Palace St David's

Along with Jane Bevans who does the most wonderful drawings of animals, and Andy Scott who makes garden furniture, I got invited to display my work at the above festival for one day, we arrived early and got the table set up by about 9:30 on a gloriously sunny May bank holiday, we couldn't have wished for better weather. Jane and husband Steve set up alongside us in our assigned "Tent" and we were able to relax for an hour before folks started arriving in earnest to the examine the many stalls with much to see and indeed sample (I was lucky enough to be able to make a quick round and sample a very nice welsh single malt, non chill filtered and bottled at 46%, plus it was also organic! Ralphy should check this stuff out)

As I got back to the stall Jenny was in the process of making the first sale of the day, my prized item, a dark coloured hollow form vase.

We did very well for the day covering our costs and even covering some material outlay for the workshop equipment too.

All in all an excellent day which was only slightly marred by the odd disappearance of a rather nice Thuya Burr & Ebony finial box which, not only was I therefore unable to sell, but I don't have any photo's of it either, I had thought perhaps I left it at home, but when I got back it isn't here, so that's a perturbing mystery.

Here is a nice shot taken by Jane of us at the very beginning of the day after we had set up.

I would like to say thank you to all the nice people who bought the items from me, I enjoyed meeting and talking to you, and even to those who enjoyed a chat but were not tempted!

Pearshaped or what?

"That's life!"  is the frequent expression for vagaries that befall us, so what vagaries have I been under the baleful influence of then?

Well, first off I was progressing very nicely with a smart little hollow form vase,

Alas! An instant of lost concentration reduced it to an example of what to avoid.

Then the lathe itself started playing up, intermittently refusing to start, followed by the extractor fan system failing and a further loss of a good sized bowl down to trying to work too late and again losing concentration, I went through the side wall, too thin!

Nvertheless, not all a loss, I did at least manage to make this neat little Natural Edged Bowl from a nice piece of Ash Burr.

Alls well etc!!

Thin

Well it's absolutely freezing outside, I had an electric ceramic heater set up on the lathe bed itself in an effort to keep warm, it was partially successful!
Reading through a few websites I cam across one covering thin stemmed Goblets, also after viewing the french trembleur turning I was keen to attempt a skinny one, and as such the following pics record the result.

I plan on doing a few more of these for future exhibitions.

I managed to sell a few items from the high street shop but sales have slackened right off again now. Meanwhile I have been invited to display some stuff at the St Davids Wild Food Festival in May, so with that in mind I have been pretty busy roughing out sufficient material to have it dry and ready to finish in time for the event.

I thought while doing this it would be a good opportunity to create another video, this time showing the process of roughing out a natural edged bowl, in Holly. You can see the video here

Much has transpired since the last update, several items sold over the holiday period from a shop in town, family have also been buying up stock for presents etc which is really nice, so several bowls sold including the multicoloured Ash bowl and also the Green vase.

I uploaded a video to youtube demonstrating the buffing wheels, apart from my talking during the process which makes the vocal a bit hard to hear, it was pretty good for a first attempt.

See the video here.

Also a new variation on the colouring with this nice little vase.

See more pics here

After yet another hiatus I have been once again busy in the workshop trying to get some stock together for the present buying spree I am hoping several will be indulging in via my pages on Etsy and Ebay, Optimism rules!

Mainly bowls right now as all the blanks I roughed out earlier are coming dry enough to complete, also I am beginning to experiment a little more with the colouring and so far it has been interesting and rewarding, at least I am not horrified by the results!

So, here are a few pictures to illustrate current stock.

Should one of these take your fancy head to the website www.kimsart.co.uk and go to the woodturning section, find the bowls and click the images, this will take you to the Etsy page for Shopswood.

Completed the demonstration piece on the website, I had pretty much decided on some form of candle stick in the early stages, but what form that would take was as yet unimagined even, however, as I progressed with the final stages the whole thing took shape and ended up quite nicely!

I now have items for sale in two local shops, and so far it is generating a lot of verbal interest, but so far no financial appreciation, which is the kind I prefer even though compliments are encouraging, hopefully a few items will be purchased as gifts sometime soon.

The finished Candlestick  See the whole process from start to finish Here

A couple of day of turning have been somewhat dramatic, yesterday I was all set to make some replacement boxes and finials for a project that went awry, during the process of making the boxes, two of them blew up on the lathe, one due to an unseen fault in the wood, it flew into about 4 pieces and shot all over the workshop, luckily I did not get hit, the second box (both in Yew) bust in half when I had a rather careless dig-in with a gouge, two hours work for nothing.
Undetered (what choice?!) I pressed on and successfully made a new Yew box for an existing finial.

And a new finial for an existing box!

I then set to making an oval natural edged bowl from half a log of Spalted Sycamore, I had finished the outside and was in the process of sanding the inside when this also decided on a career in aviation and took off from the lathe, the fault of a rather weak bit of chucking on my part, but it was recoverable with some CA glue, I prepared the wood and reached for the pot, unfortunately I was still looking at the bowl while I opened the pot of Superglue and failed to notice that I had not opened the applicator lid, but had removed the whole lid entirely, and thus as I stood gawping I dribbled much glue over my thumbnails etc, which then felt a little warm, and wonderfully glued my entire thumbnail down, you may think this insignificant, try it and see!

I did rescue the bowl.

Today I roughed out 7 Ash bowls of various styles and completed another for a neighbour, much better!

It's been sometime since I made an update, things have been going rather slowly on the sales front with nothing selling on Ebay or Etsy right now, but I have managed to make some small sales in town at a really nice store called Fabio, and also have some stuff in an Age Concern shop which has a hefty commission, but a sale is a sale and I think that stuff has a better chance of selling if people can see it for real.

Recent productions include this set of three Bud Vases made for the UK workshops September Challenge, I was delighted to get 2nd place with them.

This months challenge is a decorated plate, I have made mine and will post it up after the results.

I have also been making boxes again, this pair look good, but the lids do not fit to my satisfaction so will have to be remade. Lids are in Holly, Box in Cherry.

Finally got round to adding some more stuff to the website (www.kimsart.co.uk) and the Etsy and Ebay, hoping for a sale or two from this latest list, here are some pics.

From the bottom up, a small Finial Box from Sycamore, a miniature Crotch bowl made from a fork in a branch of Beechwood, A natural edged bowl in Sycamore and two fruit bowls from the same wood.

Having got the bulk of the shed moving done I am now going to concentrate on building up a good stock of items both for Shopswood and for future exhibitions.

Up and down the garden

The last few days I have been doing some turning but also re arranging the shed, all the fishing gear down to the bottom shed and all the timber up to the top shed where the lathe is kept, pretty tiring work but this is a more logical use of the storage space and will allow me to have room to store various blanks and roughed out bowls as well as freeing up more space in the workshop.

I have been offered an outlet in town which wants a 35% commission on sales which is a bit ouch, it means the prices will have to be fairly high to justify the work, I have made a stack of wooden fruit from Iroko and half a dozen very fine egg cups from holly, plus, so far, three bowls, once I have a few more items I will see if I can get them set out in the shop.

Also intend to see a friend who owns another shop selling craft items to see if he will sell a few things for me, hopefully at a better rate, 25% would be more like it for me.

No pics today as the mini studio is currently chaotic, I will get some done for the next update.

Yesterday was a full day in the workshop, I made two more Sycamore bowls and three earring stands, I managed to finish two stands but one was oil finished so is awaiting final polishing.

Also delighted to see the little Thuya Burr pot sell from Ebay, a boost to the funds, although no feedback from the new owner yet, I hope she is pleased with it!

I am hoping the earring stands will prove to be sellers as they are reasonably priced.

Hollow Form II "The Colouring!"

So, having made one successful Hollow form I was keen to try another, only this time I would combine the experience with an additional task, I had watched Andy Coates' video on Youtube about colouring an Ash bowl, he did a great job, I was very impressed and indeed inspired!

I decided after turning this vase that it was the ideal subject as it had little markings or grain of interest and colour could be just the thing to liven it up some.
I wanted to end up with a dark olive green and gold look, so I initially laid on an all over coat of Yellow stain, followed patches of green and the whole then overlaid with orange, the green is a bit vivid out of the bottle and the orange helps to kill it a little and mute the intensity, leaving a nice subdued forest green colour, after that I dried the stains and then overlaid the lot with three more coats of the yellow to blend the colours and tie them all together, this is in fact a technique I have often used in Watercolour painting with very thin washes of colour.

Once the colouring was complete and dry I coated the vase with three layer of finishing oil and left it overnight to dry, buffing it through the three wheel system to a soft gloss finish this morning, here then is the resulting Coloured Hollow Form Vase.

I made my first Hollow form today, it was pretty successful up to the buffing stage where it got ripped from my garsp and flew around the workshop, this cracked it down one side but I was able to effect a repair with some CA, no pics though as I gave it to my Sister! Check out the latest pages on the Woodturning part of my site.

Click here for Logs to Art website

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.

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.

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.