The shed is almost completed now. The new roof is on, and a new front wall and door have been constructed. We even managed to incorporate a stained glass window we had lying around. There is still some remedial work to complete on the floor and inside wall but the shed is now usable. This […]
The garden room is great especially if there is a sudden change in the weather when having a barbecue as it can be brought into the garden room and carried on even if it is raining. Well, that was always the theory. In practice bringing the barbecue inside just meant filling the room with smoke
Oh, my it’s been a while since my last post! The days are lengthening significantly now here in Westray and the weather has been grand of late. Sooo… Rather than “playing in the workshop” we’ve been doing some fairly major building work. There is an old semi-derelict shed built onto the back of our house
Major work at Linkshouse Read More »
I have been using a plain face shield since I started turning but whilst this has provided physical protection to my face from flying objects it has done nothing to protect my lungs from the dust generated when working with wood. Of course we’re all advised of the need to use suitable protection via respirators
Rutland PAPR (powered air purifying respirator) Read More »
The world renowned wood turner and author Richard Raffan challenges turners to cut the occasional bowl in half! This advice is to let the turner properly see just how well they have achieved an even wall thickness. It’s a double edged challenge as there is the stated intent, to check the wall thickness, but also
Bowl Wall Thickness! Read More »
As wood dries the size along the grain stays pretty much the same but across the grain it shrinks. This can be a problem when producing bowls. Two ways to avoid this is to make sure the wood is properly dried before turning another popular solution is to “twice-turn”. A twice-turned bowl is initially turned
Bowl Distortion when Drying Read More »
In this post, I’ll go through the steps of turning and decorating the eccentric bowl shown in the header. Unfortunately, as I write this I’ve realised that I missed a couple of photos but I’ll describe the process as well as I can. Okey dokey, so the first pic is of the Beech blank that
Turning and Off-Centre Bowl Read More »
Just in case anyone doesn’t know what punky wood is: Punky Wood is wood that has started to rot and become very soft. The thing is woodworkers love spalted wood which is wood at the stage of decay just before it starts to be rotten (punky) and there is a quite fine line between the
I have already posted on my Facebook page about my trip down South to visit sawmills and buy some green timber. I have been processing some of that and alway enjoy discovering what the logs are hiding inside. In truth I think I enjoy processing timber (“making wood” is alway my reply when asked what
i think i’m addicted to wood! Read More »
I had a little jaunt down to Inverness on Wednesday to visit a sawmill and a tree surgeons to shop for timber and I’ll share more on this later (once I’ve unloaded the truck, but not today as it’s bad weather – welcome home!). Whilst looking at the various pieces of timber at Epic Tree
A bowl destined to failure Read More »
Yesterday, I made a couple of new turning tools, a point tool, and a multi-purpose tool. I used 10mm diameter by 200mm long high-speed steel bar stock purchased on eBay for the “working end”. The first job was to turn a couple of handles. I used Elm for the handles, as this is what I
DIY Point tool and Multi-Purpose Tool Read More »
I posted a little while back that I had popped some pieces of beech wood into the waste/compost pile to see if they would spalt. Once these were removed they needed a little while to dry out as they were very wet from being outside. After some time to dry a little, I put one
Spalting Experiment – The Result Read More »
Spalted wood is much sought after for its interesting and beautiful grain patterning. Spalting is a natural process caused by fungal attack on the wood, if left to progress too far it ultimately destroys the wood as rot. If caught at the right time though and the wood then dried it is completely stable as
Making Spalted Beech? Read More »
I started my woodworking hobby on a scrollsaw, making mainly intarsia pieces and was pretty dismissive of woodturning. I always berated the process as “only being able to make round stuff” and being very wasteful as most of the wood ends up as shavings on the floor! Then, I was loaned a lathe to have
How I Started Woodturning Read More »
it was the Westray Christmas Fair at the weekend. Held in the Parish Kirk with refreshments provided by the RNLI it was an enjoyable if not massively profitable event. It was rather quieter than in previous years. As a few people said, I think money is a bit tight this year with the general cost
Westray Christmas Fair Read More »
