Our first meeting of the new year was saved by Chairman Roger stepping in to do a demonstration after Geoff had to cancel. Despite the short notice, Roger came well equipped with a selection of wood and tools.
Roger laid out his blanks and asked for suggestions as to what to make, eventually settling upon a long-stemmed goblet made from a piece of nicely spalted beech.
The goblet blank was about 250mm long x 100mm square and posed the first problem, as Roger didn’t have a Forstner bit with him and the chuck jaws were quite small, so hollowing with a spindle gouge was found to be impractical due to vibration of the wood. To get around this, he shortened the blank and remounted it to make a goblet with a shorter stem.
With less vibration, Roger quickly hollowed out the cup with a spindle gouge and then supported the work with the tailstock live centre pressing against a rubber ball in the cup. With this support, he shaped the outside of the cup using a spindle gouge and a skew chisel.
Moving onto the stem, he cut slots to form two upstands and then started forming them into captive rings with a thin parting tool and a captive ring tool.
Roger used a wire to burn a line in each of the rings and then released the rings with the captive ring tool.
Holding the rings out of the way (fiddly), he turned the stem to it’s final shape and sanded it. The inside of the rings he sanded by securing abrasive around the stem with some tape and then running the lathe, manipulating the rings as necessary.
A final refinement of the cup was followed by sanding and the goblet was then parted off to complete the job.
The competition table had a good selection of items this month (sorry, no picture of the table).
1st place was a segmented clock by Roger Gilbert.
2nd place was an ash bowl by Gerry Coles.
3rd place went to a box with a hinged lid by Chris Hawkins.
