Arguably, the main attraction tonight was the food! As something of a social evening, members brought along plenty of food to tuck into throughout the meeting, and there was still plenty remaining after close of play.
Still, woodturning is what the club is about so two lathes were set up and Dave, Mick and Roger turned a variety of items which generated a lot of interest and some useful ideas for many of us.
Roger made a nice little baby’s rattle with three captive rings. He made the captive rings look deceptively simple!
Dave made a snowman (why do they always have top hats?) to add to his display collection of snowman and other items, some of them decorated to add a splash of colour.
Mick turned a fencepost finial. As his blank was only just big enough for the desired diameter of the finial, he marked the centres very carefully to avoid undersizing. The marking-out method he used was a new one to many of us and was designed to obviate the inaccuracy of determining precisely the corners of a wooden blank when scribing the diagonals. He laid a steel rule carefully along each of the sides in turn and drew a pencil line along the rule in each position. This formed an inner square on the end of the blank, with sharp corners that allowed accurate diagonals to be drawn and thus the centre to be determined.
Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of the marking-out but here’s one of the nearly completed finial.
A number of potential new members also attended and were given plenty of advice (sometimes conflicting?) about what to buy, what not to buy etc. Mick also set up a sharpening station and sharpened new woodturner Kyle’s tools whilst showing him how to do it for himself.
All in all, a very nice relaxed evening with plenty of time to chat and catch up with each other.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all