Month: June 2022

This evening was the first installment of a 2 part demonstration by David Simms over 2 consecutive meetings. David is well known for his creation of watch fobs and clock and the first demonstration showed the making of a fob watch with stand. David used Acer for the fob surround and the stand base with oak for the spindle. 

This entailed a high degree of accuracy in machining the clock insert mortice and the mortice and tenon for the base (although the sizing on the night was a little tight).

The end product though was a very elegant assembly, as shown in the centre of the group on the photo below.

David started his project for the next meeting which is the hinged lid box clock which is back left on the photo. This should prove to be of real interest as the accuracy of machining will be paramount.

The evening demonstration was done by Geoff Warr who showed us how he makes a set of coasters with a plywood basket weave pattern insert.

The insert was pre-prepared by gluing the plywood strips together then turning them to round. The body of the coaster was made from a piece of ash by creating a recess for the insert then gluing it to place. It was then skimmed flat and sanded to finish and was then parted off.

However, this was not so successful as Geoff was using a club chuck and his tenon was set for his own chuck. The workpiece was not held securely and came out of the chuck. Unluckily for Geoff the incident was caught on camera, but thankfully no one was injured.

This just goes to show even the best turners have problems and you should always make sure you size the tenon correctly to the chuck jaws.

Geoff went on to make the holder for the coasters by ran out of time before it could be finished. Even so it was an entertaining and insightful demonstration giving most of us ideas for our future projects.

The June competition table produced some lovely work and the first place went to David Hartley with his 3 legged table.

Second place went to Geoff Warr for his set of coasters.

Third place was a 3 way tie with Bob Green and his deep bowl, Roger Gilbert with the small square bowl and Dave Simms with his clock and stand in a beautiful piece of snakewood.