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Cankered Ash
Cankered Ash is a beautiful wood. Ash is so often beautiful anyway but Cankered Ash is wonderful. It has all the sorts of things I really enjoy with wood. It is unpredictable and moves after it has been turned – even if it is turned quite dry but especially if it is turned fresh. There must be a lot of stresses in it. It often has a particularly good colour and sheen to it, rich and deep. And, of course, it also has holes in it! Quite why they are appealing I don’t know but it isn’t only me. It seems that the more holes there are in a piece…
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The Sap is Rising
This time of year is so wonderful yet intense, isn’t it? The sap is rising, the garden is getting sorted, everything is growing, the birds are nesting, the days, though getting longer, are way too short. I can hardly drag myself in from the garden before dark but then I’m so exhausted in the morning it is hard to drag myself out of bed. I have a wonderful commission with the wood turning so that has to take priority. When I feel I can allow myself to stop it is straight out to the garden. I can see the vegetable garden as I am wood turning which is both wonderful and…
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Miniature chair
This miniature chair is made from Laburnum and commissioned by Cymdeithas Ceredigion to be given as a prize at their Eisteddfod. Deceptively simple but this chair was actually very tricky to make. The two sides had to match, the back had to be in proportion, the sapwood had to line up perfectly between them all and there could be no sapwood at the back of the seat or where the back and seat meet. I had sawn, planed and seasoned four to five times this amount of slices but these were the only four that would work together. They had been seasoning for a year as wood cut in this…
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Cadair Cymdeithas Ceredigion
Cymdeithas Ceredigion has honoured me over the last three years by asking me to make a chair to be awarded as a prize in their Eisteddfod. The first year was for a full sized chair. Last year and this year I was asked to make a miniature chair. This is the chair I made this year and a brief description which went with it along with the translation. Tresi Aur Ond ai dyna’r enw? Beth am Feillion Sbaen, Coed Sbaen, Bedwen Sbaen? Mae’r enwau ‘na i gyd wedi dod o ardal De Ceredigion. Chwedl glywais i oedd i’r pren ddod i mewn i Aberaeron yn y 1860au fel “balast” mewn…
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Turning Mushrooms
Phil came to stay last weekend. Having taken to wood turning like a duck to water when he first tried, naturally he wanted to have a go again. (I, of course, expect everyone who tries their hand at turning to love it but suprisingly not everyone does.) When I asked Phil what he’d like to turn he said “mushrooms and earrings”. I was delighted at this. Something a bit different – where he could choose the design as they weren’t something I’d been making for ten years unlike the bowls. Years ago I’d made mushroom shaped nightlights and boxes where the top was the cap of the mushroom but I’d…
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The Secret Ballot
The Secret Ballot The secret ballot is something I think we all take for granted nowadays, whatever our political leanings or even if we feel that “whoever we vote for the government gets in”. However, we don’t have to go very far back in time when the secret ballot was but a dream in some people’s vision for a more democratic future. Troad Allan (Lock out). This Unitarian chapel became famous in 1876 as the congregation were locked out of the chapel and the graveyard for three years. The landlord, John Lloyd, Alltrodyn was a Tory and he felt that the minister Gwilym Marles Thomas, who incidentally was Dylan Thomas’…
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A Special Bandsaw
My bandsaw is like no other. I was so lucky to get it and appreciate it every time I use it. It is thanks to Huw that I have it. He spotted it when it had been dismantled from its old job and saw the potential and restored it for me. Everyone who uses a bandsaw is admiring or even slightly envious when they see it. This bandsaw is the machine I would find hardest to replace if anything went wrong with it. So what is so special about the bandsaw? What makes it so usable to me is the size of the table and the throat. The throat…
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My Big Lathe
This is my favourite lathe and was in fact the first lathe that I bought though I didn’t use it straight away. I can turn up to 24″ diameter on this lathe. I love the history associated with this lathe. It started life as a metal spinning lathe – something I’d never even heard of when I first had the lathe. It was in a poor state and I had to derust then paint it. There was no tool rest and when I was asking Huw to make one for me I really didn’t know what I needed. This tool rest can be moved at a couple of different points…
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Viceroy Short-bed Lathe
This Viceroy short bed lathe is a wonderful lathe. I can turn up to 16″ over the bed and if I wanted and needed I could also turn larger pieces on the outside. However since I have another, larger lathe I’ve never set this up for outboard turning. This lathe has been converted to variable speed running from zero to about 1400 rpm. This is great as the belts for the different speeds are harder to change on this lathe than my little Scheppach. So I have an inverter mounted on the wall and a three phase motor. There was a three phase originally on the lathe but unfortunately not…
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The Smallest Lathe
This is a Scheppach (dmt450) 5 speed bench mounted wood turning lathe. This lathe was the first lathe I used seriously. And I did use it seriously considering it was a small inexpensive lathe. It was bolted well to the bench and within months I was turning bowls up to the maximum diameter of 10″ (150mm). And these weren’t always round bowls either. I had already been making furniture for several years so I knew how much I liked the natural edge and the beauty of the wood in its fullness, not cut into a straight line for my ease of use. I was very impressed with this lathe. It…