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Before the demo started, we were told that the club challenge for Daventry Woodworks next year is to be a teaset – teapot, cups, saucers, plates and accessories. This gives plenty of scope for interpretation and opportunity for lots of people to take part. Should be fun!

We had a double act tonight with Mick Denton and Viv Harvey tasked with making the same item in whichever way they thought best. We, the audience, were not privileged to be told what they were making so we just had to be patient and try to figure it out from the two quite different approaches on show.

Mick started off with a cube of oak about 100mm on a side, mounted on a screwchuck.

This he proceeded to bring to round before using a bowl gouge to shape it to a rounded cone with a tenon on the end.

 

After sanding it he reversed it onto the chuck and centred it before tightening the chuck for a secure hold.

Using a bowl gouge and a carbide tipped hollowing tool Mick hollowed it out and then drilled a hole through the bottom.

 

After a quick sanding, he took it off the chuck and dribbled some superglue into a crack that had appeared in the wood.

Another block of wood was mounted between centres, rounded, and drilled through before opening up further. Mick used a 10mm parting tool to size the edges to suit the tenon on the larger piece of wood and then drilled all the way through before reversing it.

 

After adding some detailing and sanding it, he parted it off and then glued the two pieces together with a dab of superglue to hold everything in place while the PVA glue set.

The picture shows the one that Mick made today as well as an earlier practice piece. Starting to get an idea of what it is now?

 

Viv started off with a block of sapele about 150mm long x 110mm square, mounted between centres.

Bringing it to round with a spindle roughing gouge, he then put a chucking tenon on each end with a bedan/parting tool.

Moving to a smaller piece of wood about 150mm long x 65mm square, he brought it to round with a spindle roughing gouge before drilling out the end and hollowing the opening out with a spindle gouge.

 

He then brought up the tailstock for support and shaped the outside; all finished off with acrylic sanding sealer and beeswax before parting it (what exactly???) off.

The larger piece of wood was now mounted into the chuck, drilled out and reversed. The now redundant chucking tenon was removed with a parting tool and shaping of the exterior began.

With the shape established, Viv hollowed out the inside with a spindle gouge and then used a scraper to get a clean finish, following up with some abrasive on a stick to avoid catching his fingers.

For aesthetics, he added some detailing and wire-burn lines.

 

Next, he parted if off and reversed it onto the chuck jaws, using some paper to to protect it from damage as the tailstock was brought up to hold it in place.

 

With it securely held, Viv finessed the tenon size to suit the other component, applied superglue, and pushed the two items together with the tailstock.

 

He once again used acrylic sanding sealer and beeswax as a finish and then buffed it up.

 

So what was this all about?

The picture shows Viv’s offering from an angle that may help you to figure out that these are a pair of funnels, something that we’ve all made at one time or another!

 

The evening demonstration was held by Bryan Brumfield, one of our established members. His theme for the night was the Banksia Nut which is a seed pod from a species of plant from Australia. It is an item that is often turned into small, interesting looking artefacts. Banksia nuts have a relatively solid core surrounded by a fibrous layer which is an adaptation for the Banksia to survive bush fires as the fibres insulate the seeds. 

Bryan first cut the pod into sections and the first section (the biggest) was turned between centres to create a vase which was then mounted on a chuck to allow him to drill out the centre. By doing this the pod became “see through” where the seeds are lodged.

Once finished the Banksia pod was spray coated with sanding sealer. It is Bryans intention to fill the voids with Milliput but as this takes 24 hours to cure he did not do this tonight. The turning was left partially complete so that he could undertake the finishing later.

A second section of the Banksia pod was turned, again between centres, to form a Tea Light holder which when the light was inserted created an effect of the light shining through the voids.

The final piece utilised the point of the seed pod as a mushrom cap with a stalk turned from a piece of ash and this showed that all of the Banksia pod can be used with very little waste.

The night also had the October competition table which was really well represented.

First place went to Bryan Brumfield with his rainbow dish.

Second place was Viv Harvey’s triple candle holder.

Third place was Colin Humphries’ dish

 

 

 

Club member Henry Howard gave his first demo this evening, and it was a somewhat unusual one with a humourous background.

He made an (all-seeing?) eyeball mounted on a pedestal, something that he originally did for an opthalmic surgeon who had treated him. Comprised of three main pieces, he carried out the turning on his own lathe, mostly with the aid of small chucks for mounting the wood.

 

Stem

The square blank, approx 150mm x 25mm was mounted between centres and brought to round, and then a tenon put on one end – the size of which Henry checked in a little test piece that he had brought along.

 

It was then mounted in the chuck, supported by the tailstock, and a 7mm tenon formed on the end.

With this done, Henry added some shape and detail to the stem before sanding through the grits and applying friction polish.

 

Base

The blank for this was mounted on a screw chuck, trued up, and the circumference sanded. The disk was dished slightly, as this will be the underside of the base, and he turned a rounded profile for the top edge.

A quick sanding and polish, and the base was reversed onto the chuck where the circumference and top were also sanded and polished. Henry pointed out that you know when the polish is dry when there’s no longer a shadow on the workpiece.

Eyeball

Taking a small round bar of ivory alternative, Henry mounted it in the chuck and used a parting tool to delineate the size of the sphere then drilled a hole in the end – this will be for the pupil and iris of the eye.

Using a simple home-made jig, he drilled a 7mm hole in the side of the blank to suit the tenon on top of the stem.

For this latter drilling operation he locked the spindle to ensure a good clean hole.

Mounting a piece of wood in a chuck, he turned it down to diameter to form the iris and glued it into the eyeball (still a cylinder at this point), using the tailstock to press it into position.

Once this was done, Henry cut off the surplus iris wood and drilled a smaller hole into it. Next, he turned a piece of black wood and glued it into the hole to form the pupil before cutting off the surplus.

With all parts now in place, he rounded over the front of the eyeball and then repeated the operation for the back of the eyeball, using a skew chisel. Happy with the shape, he sanded the eyeball (to 4000 grit!), applied some friction polish and parted it off.

Finally, the stub was removed and rubbed down before assembling the three parts to complete a rather unusual desk ornament!

Club member Gerry Coles gave his first ever demo this evening – and it was a corker!

He made a lovely little earring stand out of three separate pieces of oak – pointing out that this meant that the base and top could be made from crossgrain orientation and the stem from wood mounted conventionally for spindle turning. If made from one piece, such a small stand may end up quite weak at the edges due to the grain orientation.

Base

He started off mounting the blank between centres and truing it up with a bowl gouge before using a home made HSS scraper to make a recess to suit his small chuck. The home made tool has a relief ground into it which allows it to be used with the tailstock still in place.

A similar process was then used to prepare the top before mounting the base onto the chuck.

Gerry shaped the base for aesthetics, leaving a little upstand on the top side to blend into the stem, trimmed with a scraper presented just below centre as he finds this prevents the scraper from tending to walk across.

Next, he put a bead on the upstand, using a home made beading tool, and being careful to leave a shoulder so that the chuck will have a register when reversing the piece. To complete turning the base, Gerry dished the top of it to hold rings and other small items of jewellery.

For finishing, he sanded through the grits and applied boiled linseed oil, wiped off the surplus and then applied beeswax with the lathe running (which blends the BLO and wax), and buffed with a paper towel.

Having forgotten to do so earlier, he drilled an 8mm diameter hole for the stem tenon in the upstand.

Top

This was mounted in the chuck and the underside hollowed out a little, leaving an upstand with a bead and shoulder to match that on the base.

Yet another home made scraper was used to produce a fine finish in the hollowed area and a couple of detail lines added to enhance the appearance before a quick sanding and an 8mm diameter hole drilled for the stem tenon. BLO and wax applied as previously.

The top was now reversed onto the chuck and turned down to a thinner section to make the drilling of the holes easier.

Gerry rotated the lathe to mark the circle of holes and then showed how to use the lathe indexing to mark the exact position of the 36 holes with a pencil held on the toolrest. To speed up the job, though, he carefully placed a pre-drilled template over the wood and held it in place with the tailstock and then drilled the 1mm diameter holes with a Dremel. Without breaking any drills!

 

With that out of the way, he bevelled the edge and dished the top slightly before sanding, BLO and wax.

 

Stem

The square blank was mounted between centres and turned to round with a spindle roughing gouge. Gerry used a template to mark out the positions of aesthetic features and tenons accurately – important if making a pair, as any differences will be highly noticeable.

Once marked out, he used a parting tool to set the diameters and turned the stem to shape, and turned a tenon on each end to suit the 8mm holes previously drilled into the base and top.

 

Finished off with sanding, BLO and wax.

Assembly

Finally, Gerry partially parted off at both ends, added small bevels on the end, and a groove on each tenon for the glue and then sawed off by hand. Dry assembly was simply a matter of pushing the three pieces firmly together, with gluing to be carried out a later time.

Throughout his demo, Gerry explained what he was doing, and why, with a lot of apparently minor steps making the next step easier. I have tried to incorporate those tips in the above notes but if any are missing or in the wrong order – it’s my fault, not Gerry’s!

 

The competition table entries this month were quite varied.

 

1st place went to Dave Simms for a slightly startled looking bird.

2nd place was for a natural edge yew bowl by Mick Denton.

Joint 3rd places were for an offset vase with flowers and a protruding test tube by Geoff Warr

………and a bowl by Duncan Anderson.

We had a slightly unusual demo this evening, with Chairman Roger Gilbert and club member Gerald Hubbard both tasked with producing a natural-edged tazza from two similar pieces of yew.

The yew was still fairly moist so it turned nicely but that also meant that there was a risk of splitting from the pith – and some cracks were already visible. More of that below!

Roger

Roger volunteered to go first and initially mounted the blank between a friction pad in the chuck and a live centre, but this slipped a bit, so he quickly switched to using a steb drive in the chuck.

 

He started by reducing the area in way of the stem and foot with a spindle roughing gouge, then added a chucking tenon and mounted the wood in the chuck.

 

Using a continental spindle gouge and with the tailstock brought up for support he further reduced the stem area and then started dishing the tazza.

 

Carrying on, Roger continued the hollowing, and also worked the back (underside) of the tazza, lessening the wall thickness. Whilst thinning the stem down, he was particularly careful as a crack was propagating from the pith as he removed material.

 

Once he’d gone as far as he dared, Roger did a few finishing cuts on the foot to form a nice ogee shape. Next was to pull back the tailstock and remove the stub in the centre of the tazza before sanding through the grits overall, applying sanding sealer and wax and parting off.

The final operation was to mount a sanding arbor in the chuck and clean up the underside of the foot.

Overall, a nice little tazza and I think the picture shows the extent of the cracks that Roger had to contend with!

Gerald

Like Roger, Gerald started with the blank between centres (steb drive + live ring centre) but pointed out that he likes to use a bowl gouge for much of the time, due to its greater strength and less chattering when working with a larger overhang.

 

He reduced the area in way of the stem and foot and did an initial scooping out of the bowl before adding a chucking tenon and mounting the wood in the chuck.

 

Working gradually, Gerald worked on the underside and continued some hollowing, interspersed with reducing the stem diameter. Aiming for a nice thin bowl, he noted that the wood was moving as stresses were relieved.

He finished off carefully with some light shear cuts.

Sanding the bowl, Gerald reduced the lathe speed to avoid heat checking (there are enough cracks already!) and supported it with one hand.

 

Once this was done, he moved back to the stem and carefully continued refining its shape and reducing its diameter especially towards the lower end.

Disaster! A chunk came off the stem from one of the cracks leaving him with a “design opportunity” as he put it.

With fewer options now, he recovered well, and narrowed the stem down to remove the area of damage, but kept the shape simple.

This held everything together and he was able to safely sand overall and then improve the shape of the foot before applying sanding sealer and giving it a very light rub over with a grey “scouring pad”.

 

The final operation was to part it off.

This was a particularly interesting evening as two very good turners dealt with the same challenge in slightly different ways but also had to deal with the vagaries of the particular piece of wood that they were given.

This evening, Ian Ethell gave us a demonstration of how to make a little elephant – of which, his house has many variants apparently!

Ian brought along some examples of his work for us to see.

He also handed out very useful dimensioned drawings showing that the elephant was made up of a number of pieces: head and trunk, ears, body, tail, and legs.

As he’ll be mounting a number of smaller pieces between centres, he mostly used a light pull drive in the chuck. The wood used was sycamore and, for much of the time, he used a 3/8” bowl gouge with a 40-40 grind as promoted by Stuart Batty.

Body

Starting with the body, he showed us that the blank was pre-drilled and oblong rather than square in order to get a flat underside for the legs.

Mounted between centres, Ian quickly formed the initial shape by making a long cove at one end and then rounding the corners off the body before turning the body until the underside flat was the desired width.

He next refined the overall shape and took the neck down to the required diameter, blending it into the cove. At this point Ian made a comment that, with the 40-40 grind, it was important not to put too much pressure on the bevel of the gouge. The body was finished off with minor adjustments of dimensions and an overall sanding.

Head

First, a 6mm hole was drilled in the end, and deepened using a 3mm drill in order to suit the light pull drive. With the blank between centres, Ian brought it to round and started forming the trunk with a long cove before shaping the head and trunk and blending them together.

Once sanded, he marked both sides of the head on the centre line for the ear positions and used a forstner bit to drill at an angle to suit the tenons that will be on the ears.

A final sanding, then parted off with a skew.

Ears

These are essentially cupped round discs with tenons turned on the lathe from a blank that had been previously cut to shape with a saw.

With the blank in the chuck, it was turned to the required diameter and the end cupped, then a tenon put on the back of the ear. This procedure ensures that the wood has support behind it whilst hollowing out.

The back of the ear was then curved down to the tenon, sanded (with care to protect fingers!) and parted off.

Tail

A length of small square blank was brought to round and shaped with the bowl gouge, using a shear cut for a good finish beforesanding and parting off.

Legs

The two rear legs are turned on centre but the two front ones are turned slightly offset in order to point them forwards. He used a home-made three-pin marker for marking out the offsets.

Ian turned the blank to diameter then marked out the legs and tenons along its length before forming the tenons with a parting tool.

The individual legs are made with a slight taper towards the foot, and the foot chamfered slightly. There is also a small undercut at the tenon/shoulder join in order to ensure a snug fit when inserted into the elephant’s body. Each leg was sanded in turn before parting off, and a chamfer applied to the end of the tenon for easy insertion.

Assembly

Ian sanded (50mm sanding disc in chuck) small flats on the head for the ears to sit against and dry assembled the elephant, although there was no time to add decoration. The picture below shows a completed elephant, with “features” added.

 

The competition table had a good selection of entries this month.

 

1st place went to Roger Gilbert for a clock inlaid with the ends of shotgun cartridges, and an elegant stand for the clock.

 

2nd place was for a primus stove by Dave Simms.

 

Joint 3rd places were for a yo-yo by Jerry Coles

and a pair of bud vases by Viv Harvey.

This evening, Viv Harvey had a couple of very different treats in store for us, namely some collet type chucks and a pasta cutter rolling pin.

Collet Chucks

Viv uses these chucks to hold small items securely, such as the tiny goblet shown below, without having to buy a wide variety of expensive scroll chuck jaws and then waste time swapping those jaws around. The wooden chucks have the added benefits that they are far less likely to mark the workpiece and there is no chance of metal-to-metal contact when working very close to the chuck. We’ve all been there!

He mounted a relatively soft sapele blank about 150mm x 80mm square between centres and rounded it before putting a chucking tenon on one end. It was then mounted in the chuck, supported with the tailstock.

The collet needs to have a tenon and shoulder so that it can be held in the scroll chuck, and a groove to locate a piece of elastic holding the four quadrants together. The nose of the chuck will be rounded over for safety.

These operations Viv quickly carried out before drilling an 8mm hole right through the wooden chuck and marked it 8mm for future reference.

 

He then parted and sawed off the chuck and put it to one side.

 

Next, Viv cleaned up the face of the remaining blank and then repeated the process, but with a 10mm drill. He made two more chucks from this blank, with 12mm and 16mm hole diameters.

Note that it is necessary to start with a small drill for the first chuck and then increase the sizes in order to avoid drilling into the next chuck with an oversize drill.

Rather than waste the stub of the blank, Viv cleaned up the face and drilled it out to take a screw – thus producing a screw chuck.

Returning to the collet chucks, Viv cut them into four quadrants on the bandsaw, remarking that he finds four pieces better than three – and easier to cut.

 

He immediately marked the quadrants of each chuck 1, 2, 3, 4, to keep them in the correct order, and secured them with butcher’s trussing elastic which lasts very well without degrading like ordinary elastic bands.

….and Viv kindly donated the four chucks to the club for inclusion in our collection of tools!

Pasta Cutter Rolling Pin

A number of designs are possible, depending upon the type of pasta required e.g. plain for sheet pasta; closely beaded for tagliatelle; wider beaded for ribbon pasta. On this occasion, Viv decided to make a rolling pin to cut ribbon pasta.

 

To make life easier, Viv uses a storyboard for the longitudinal dimensions and templates to set the diameters.

 

The rolling pin started off as a 250mm x 50mm square blank (beech?) mounted between centres, which was turned to round and a chucking tenon cut in order to mount it in the headstock, with support from the tailstock.

With the help of the story board and templates Viv marked off the handles with a thin parting tool and reduced the blank to the relevant dimensions with a spindle gouge. The rolling pin was sanded and the roller shoulders rounded off before adding v-cuts at the transition between handle and roller – these are aesthetic touches and can be modified to taste.

For the pasta cutting beads, he first marked the middle of the roller and then used the story board to mark the bead positions.

 

A thin parting tool effectively delineated the beads and the grooves were then widened to suit ribbon pasta, ending up with a depth of about 3mm.

 

To sand the grooves, Viv used home-made sanding sticks of various grits – sticks coated in PVA glue with sanding grit set into the glue. He finds that this gives consistent depth and sharp sides to the beads.

He tidied up the ends of the roller and shaped the handles for aesthetics and comfort and sanded them lightly. A finish is not usually necessary, but if one is applied, it must, of course, be foodsafe. Viv uses sunflower oil and the surplus wiped off with a cloth.

Finally, he parted and sawed the ends off and pushed upholstery pins into the ends of the handles for a nice touch. The picture at the top shows how they look.

Before the demo started, Mick Denton showed us an example of a t-shirt that can be made for club members at very modest cost. Complete with embroidered club logo and with a choice of conventional t-shirt or polo shirt, a show of hands indicated a healthy interest and Mick said he will progress inquiries with the maker before taking orders.

Tonight we had Dan Smith, proprieter of Taylors Mirfield, as our demonstrator, showing us his technique for making a 3-legged stool.

Dan started off with a general background introduction and then mounted the 200mm square sycamore seat pad blank in the chuck, using a faceplate ring with very short screws. He pointed out that, as a Yorkshireman, he was obliged to watch the pennies and that square blanks were cheaper than round ones but watch your knuckles!

He reduced the blank to round, taking care to avoid the corners and initially keeping the speed down so as not to have any breakout or splinters. Once round, Dan used the lathe indexing and the toolrest to mark out the positions of the three legs.

He did not actually drill out the holes, having a previously prepared blank, but he did show us his home-made jig for drilling the holes on a drill press at the correct angle and distance from the rim. Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of it, but it’s essentially a v-block mounted on a wedge to give the required angle. The exact angle will vary from stool to stool but is set to bring the legs out to roughly the same diameter as the seat – this provides stability without having legs sticking out so far that they become a trip hazard.

For each leg, a 35mm hole is drilled partway through the seat from the underside, and then a 22mm hole all the way through.

Dan next scooped out the centre of the disc, taking care not to impinge upon the drilled holes, and made a chucking tenon in the recess. Using a mix of pull cuts and push cuts with the bowl gouge he shaped the underside of the seat cutting the profile around the edges so that the angled 35mm holes were the same depth all the way round.

He used a skew chisel as a scraper to tidy up and then power sanded before finishing off with abrasive wax.

He reversed the seat onto the chucking tenon and then removed the faceplate ring before dishing the seat to shape, ensuring that the screwholes from the faceplate ring were all gone. After sanding, Dan used abrasive wax for the finish – but then admitted that this was unnecessary as the top would need to be tidied up again after the legs were fitted.

For making the legs, Dan uses a story board for the main dimensions (diameters and positions of features) and demonstrated its use on the single leg that he was making for the demo – he had two others with slightly different bands of decoration to illustrate some of the many options.

The leg blank was mounted between centres, turned down to the principal dimensions and tapered between max diameter and the tenon on the top end.

At this point Dan showed us that he takes the tenon down to the final diameter by using an open-ended spanner with the top jaw sharpened to shave away any surplus and the edge removed from the bottom jaw.

The bottom of the leg was sized with the story board and a parting tool before refining the taper along the length of the leg with a beading/parting tool used as a skew chisel. The story board was used to align on the shoulder at the top of the leg and to mark out the area to be decorated.

With the area marked out, Dan used a small spiralling tool held at about 45 degrees to texture the area. After multiple passes he was satisfied with the result and defined the area by v-cuts with a skew chisel.

The whole leg was then lightly sanded, initially rotating and then stationary along the grain. Masking tape was applied either side of the decorated area before spraying it with ebonising lacquer and leaving it to dry.

While the lacquer was drying, Dan mounted the seat in some Cole jaws and removed the chucking tenon on the underside with a bowl gouge (light cuts to avoid dislodging the seat), finishing off with some power sanding. The wax finish will be applied later when he finishes the top of the seat.

With the leg now dry, he re-mounted it between centres and removed any ebonising lacquer overspray and re-cut the v-grooves. Now to highlight the decorated area. Applying a small amount of acrylic paint on a brush and then brushing it out on a paper towel left a very small amount on the brush which Dan proceeded to lightly run over the texturing. This dry brush technique leaves just a a hint of colour to emphasise the texturing.

As time was now running out, Dan explained that he would allow the paint to dry and then spray melamine lacquer over it before parting off the leg. With the legs in place and protruding through the top of the seat, he would mark around the tenons then remove them and cut to length before final fitting.

He would then cut a slot in the top of the leg tenons and secure with walnut wedges. Some minor details – he should have relieved the edge of the shoulder a little to ensure a good fit, and the wedges would have some glue applied, but there is no need to glue the tenons themselves.

Finally, sand smooth and apply a finish to the top of the seat.

This evening, Bryan Brumfield demonstrated the making of a coloured discus bowl from an ash blank about 215mm diameter x 50mm thick.

With a tenon already on one side of the blank, Bryan mounted it on a screwchuck and marked the middle of the rim before using a bowl gouge to shape the underside.

To remove any turning marks, he experimented with using a Simon Hope negative rake scraper and a rotary friction sander.

Not entirely happy with the results, he then used a Sorby KT200 tipped scraper and finished off with an oil/wax mix and standard abrasives. Next he sprayed the wood with acrylic sanding sealer which was rubbed in with some Yorkshire Grit abrasive wax and then polished with a cloth and wax.

With the underside finished, Bryan reversed the bowl onto the tenon and faced it off before shaping the upper side of the bowl with a bowl gouge, mostly using pull cuts from the centre out to the rim.

After sanding, he applied a purple spirit stain with some paper towel….

….and allowed it to dry before sanding down to leave just a few areas of purple.

This was followed by a little red stain down one side and some yellow over the red and towards the middle. Next was some royal blue splodged over the other colours, but leaving some gaps and some green here and there. These colours were all artistically applied after a bit of umming and aahing!

With the colour applied, he rubbed them all over with a bit of meths on a towel to blend the colours and remove any sharp edges.

After a few minutes, he sprayed it with acrylic sanding sealer and allowed it to dry. For a final finish, Bryan applied finishing oil and wiped off the surplus.

At this point he remarked that he would often take a bit off the edge of the bowl and colour it with a black marker to add definition. The whole thing would then be allowed to dry overnight before rubbing down lightly with webrax and adding a further coat of oil.

For the purposes of the demo, however, he proceeded straight to the next operation, which was to hollow out the bowl with a bowl gouge. He tidied up using the Hope negative rake scraper (more successful used internally) then finished off with sanding, Yorkshire Grit and a gloss wax.

With the demo complete, Bryan pointed out that he would later add more coats of finish on the rim and underside and reverse the bowl into cole jaws or a longworth chuck to remove the mounting tenon.

The grain of the ash was beautifully complemented by the colours applied and the final result was a very attractive little bowl. Thank you Bryan!

Chris Harkin was our demonstrator for tonight, with Jiminy Cricket his somewhat unusual subject.

Jiminy was made out of three main parts – body, head and hat – plus feet and hands, all joined together as appropriate.

The body was made first, with the blank set up between chuck and tailstock centre and then shaped to make the body segments before burning a line between the segments using a wire. It was sanded all over and finished off with an abrasive wax of Chris’s own making. Finally, it was parted off.

NOTE: the abrasive wax is a mixture of baby oil, beeswax and diatomaceous earth; Chris is still experimenting with exact proportions.

Next, the head. A blank was mounted in the chuck and the diameter trued up with a skew chisel. Chris then used the skew chisel and gouges to shape the head. The tailstock end was left blunt in order to form the nose.

Now for the hat. Mounted in a similar fashion between chuck and tailstock live centre, Chris quickly trued it up then shaped it with a gouge. To finish, he sanded it and then “painted” it with a felt tip pen with the lathe stationary. To reduce variations in colour, he applied wax while the ink was still tacky and then polished it with a paper towel at speed. Parted off and put to one side with the preceding two parts.

The feet and hands were turned as two items made from a cylinder mounted between the chuck and tailstock, parted off and then cut in half with a saw. In readiness for glueing to some welding wire, holes were drilled in appropriate positions – different for hands and feet.

To assemble Jiminy, Chris sanded flats on top of the body and on the bottom of the head, with another flat offset on on the top of the head for the hat. These were then drilled to accept dowels.

Two further holes were drilled in the hat brim to take the antennas which he made by curling the ends of some welding wire with pliers. Chris pointed out that the sharp ends of the cut wire need to be covered with a bead and turned inwards.

He then dowelled and glued the body head and hat together.

Taking some more welding wire, he bent the arms and legs to anatomically correct (????) shapes for an upright stance (he could have decided upon another stance e.g. prone), drilled holes to accept the arms and legs and glued them into position before also glueing the hands and feet on.

Chris drilled nose, sanded it flat and glued a bead on, with other beads being glued on for the eyes.

All was now complete other than for him to make a walking stick out of dowelling, with a coloured knob on top. To hold it securely, he filed a groove in Jiminy’s hand and glued it into position.

Now Jiminy looks ready to embark upon his adventures!

The competition table had a variety of items this month.

1st place was a natural edge bowl by Bob Green.

2nd place went to a set of miniature lidded vases by Viv Harvey.

3rd place was tied between a lidded box by Gerald Hubbard and a clock by Gerry Coles.