Club Night Report

Wednesday 11th October 2023

Club Night Photos for Wednesday 11th October 2023 - Guest Demonstrator: John Boyne-Aitken

The demonstrator for the October 2023 meeting was a return of John Boyne-Aitken aka "The Bowler Hatted Turner" (see website: www.thebowlerhattedturner.co.uk ) - John explained that people often forget names, but, always remembered the hat!

Tonight's demonstration was the making of a Three-Tier Cake Stand - which John first made as a gift for his daughter's wedding. This became a major exercise when he found that he needed to make 50 of them!  He approached the task as a 'production job' - with a full set of dimensioned drawings, materials required and cost/ time effective methods of making 150 platters in 3-different sizes, along with 100 support spindles, 50 top-pieces and cross bar carrying handles.  The timber selected was ash planks about 1 ¼" thick - laminated where necessary, to get the required width for each platter and glued up in home-made jigs, secured with 'old-fashioned' folding wedges.  The timber was planned on one side only, cut to size initially as squares, and then bandsawn into disks on a home-made circle-cutting jig - which relied on a small drilled hole in the centre of each blank.

John started his demonstration by holding a circular blank, with its planed side against a faceplate covered in non-slip matting - held on a dovetail spigot in a 4-jaw chuck. The tailstock centre was used to centralise and provide sufficient pressure to drive the part.  He proceeded to show various cuts using different size bowl and spindle gouges to turn the 'underside' of the platter - finishing off with a negative rake scraper to remove any tooling marks and finish sanding through the grits.
The remaining ¼" diameter, stub in the centre of the platter was removed with a hammer!
A Jacobs chuck holding a Forstner bit was first used to align and hold the platter against the faceplate - and then used to drill through the part - which then dropped neatly onto the stem (of the Forstner bit).
The part was reversed on the faceplate and aligned on the central (drilled) hole with the tailstock centre. To complete the turning of the platter, the outside edge was rounded over to blend with the rim.

The supporting spindles were made from off-cuts from the boards - approx. 1 ¼" square, mounted between centres - and turned to round. A spigot was turned at the tailstock end to match the size of the hole in the centre of the platter.  A 4-jaw chuck was mounted - and held the spindle, on the spigot and aligned with the tailstock centre. A Forstner bit, in a Jacobs chuck, was used to drill the end approx. ½" deep - then supported with the tailstock centre, and finish turned and sanded.

When the parts are assembled, John specified that the spindles are glued to each other - not to the platters, as they should be allowed to rotate freely - for shrinkage/ expansion/ contraction reasons. All of the parts are given a coating of acrylic varnish and beeswax.

John showed his 'running in reverse' bench grinder - which was a standard grinder, with the guards swapped-over so that it could be used with the wheels running 'upwards'.  See John's YouTube video at - www.youtube.com/watch?v=swK3GLtFdHM   for details of how it is used to obtain a razor-sharp edge on his skew chisels (and carving tools).

For the second part of John's demonstration, he made a Christmas tree using various skew chisel techniques, a spindle gouge and a parting tool. This was textured with a knurling type tool, and coloured with a green Sharpie and a gold pen. The second item was a Snowman, wearing a top hat - also made mainly using a skew chisel.

Tonight, we were treated to a unique insight into production 'thinking processes' and production turning methods, to make large numbers of the same item.  It was all very well explained, and easy to follow. An entertaining, engaging and informative evening.
Thank you, John!

The Display Table was well supported and showed a good number of items…

Geoff Speake showed a laminated lighthouse lamp, mounted on a decorative timber slab.  Paul Kohn brought along a rustic,
3-tier, cake stand, with swivelling trays, he had made as a gift - it was complete with its own tall 3-legged, display pedestal.  
Martin Barrett presented a number of lidded boxes, made in London plane and walnut, yew, mulberry and walnut - along with a mounted 'bird shape' and three badger hair shaving brushes.  Dave Newman displayed two hedgehogs, which had been turned, burnt and wire brushed. Tim Mortimer's pepper grinder/ mill was made in walnut with a chatter work finish to the top.