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
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 »