HWA July meeting

Last week was the July meeting of the Hampshire wood turners association. I’ve already written a mini report for the Hampshire woodturners new website
This is not yet the official website, but I’ve been working on them to move. Since I believe that a wordpress blog is much easier to manage than their current website.
If all goes to plan they will redirect their hostname to the new site, and I can help them create content there.

However I still wanted to write up my own impressions of the meeting, and keep them separate from the ‘official’ writeup.

This month Mark Hancock came to demonstrate what he termed a ‘rocking vessel’
What this actually means is a hollow form, with no flat base. So rather than standing up in a conventional way, they roll around, or ‘rock’ to a natural resting point.

These are interesting, I’m not sure what I personally think about the particular design he showed us. I was interested in the methods that went into making it, but I don’t think I actually liked the resulting object.

The texture on the outside is probably the thing I was most interested in. However before we got to that he shaped the outside profile down from a cylinder and then hollowed it.

Having seen a number of demonstrations now, there are certain things that are getting a little old, repeated information that everyone gives. Certainly I don’t think they should stop giving it, after all I found the same information interesting the first time. But now I find I’m tuning out from certain bits of tips and advice that I’ve heard repeated often.

That said Mark had some useful points to make about the complicated terminology used in woodturning. The same things tend to get referred to in various ways by different people. Spindle turning, bowl turning, faceplate turning, end grain turning, etc etc. He pointed out that many of the terms dictate what you’re turning.
Instead he prefers to talk about all turning as one of 2 types.
Parallel grain turning, where the wood grain runs parallel to the bed bars.
And cross grain, where the grain runs at right angles to the bed bars.
The methods of holding etc etc, are a different factor, but the thing you need to understand is the direction of grain and the implication that has for tool use.

One great tip that I pricked up my ears for, regarded putting a dead centre in the headstock inside when you attach a normal chuck. His reason for this was having once attached a large heavy piece to a headstock on a Record lathe, (same make as mine but a few models higher) and when he switched it on the weight simply crushed the mostly hollow spindle. Ouch.
Repairs cost him 3 or 4 days of being unable to turn (which he did professionally) and a not insignificant sum.
By putting a dead centre in the spindle, you effectively make it a solid bar. It had not occurred to me that it would fit, but given I have one, and it is basically useless for anything else. I shall try to get into the habbit. I don’t think I’m in danger of turning anything that heavy. but better safe than sorry.

Something I noticed about this demo, as compared to last months. Was that nearly every part of it used a tool I don’t have.
Where as last months demo was mostly showing what you can achieve with simple tools and careful measurements. (Ok so they also indicated a need for a bench planer which is not a small requirement, but you could get by without)

This month though, hollowing was done with a special hollowing tool. It did make the job look easy, and he had a number of tips to provide. But I’m not about to go get myself a hollowing tool so…

One interesting tool use was to use a cabinet scraper to help get a good finish on the outside. He was able to use it freehand, and could do some final shaping with it to help him get the form he is looking for. Cabinet scrapers aren’t too expensive and can easily be sharpened on a dry grinder. It was interesting to see a tool being used without a tool rest, but I guess the point is that you’re taking very light cuts to get a better surface finish.

Then having used the hollowing tool to form coves at intervals on the outside (he could of used a spindle gouge etc, but since he had the hollower in his hand and it would do the job why not)

The result looked a little like a large honey stick thing. Like a bee hive or something.

Next he marked out parallel lines around the outside of the shape. Basically using the jaws for the chuck to give him 4 evenly spaced points, and drawing by eye along the length. Then, again by eye, drawing another 4 lines evenly spaced, each half way between the first 4.

He made a good point here, that accurate measurement was not necessary, in fact could be harmful to the overall effect. This is supposed to be an organic shape, so too much precision could make it seem machined.

Then for another fun tool, the mini arbortech. This is an attachment for an angle grinder (I’ve got an angle grinder so that’s something) It extends out and provides a mount for a smaller cutting blade which is basically 8 chainsaw teeth in a circle.
With this he could lock the vessel in place, and run the min chainsaw along the lines he had marked out, cross cutting the coves. To give the outside texture.

At this point I was wondering how you get back to a nice smooth finish, having a pretty rough cut with the arbortech. And the answer was to burn it!

Apparently it is a well known technique for treating wood, to scorch the outer layers black. This forms a hard outer surface which protects the body of the wood.

At this point another tool I don’t have, a blow torch. Mark mentioned that you need a gas that burns as hot as you can. This allow you to scorch the outer layer quickly without causing heat checking in the wood. There are various blow torch types available, and he used mapgas (at least I think that’s what he called it) it came in a yellow cylinder and he said you can get it in places like B&Q. This burns hotter than butane or propane, and whilst it is more expensive, you actually use less because it has effect quicker.

I didn’t see this bit in action, because he went outside, away from smoke detectors. He did give some sensible safety tips for if you’re doing this sort of thing. Get fireproof board to do it on. A welders glove to protect your hands, clear up any wood shavings that might catch. And do NOT use dust extractor either during or after. As there is a risk of pulling an ember into your dust extractor where upon hilarity will not ensue.

The burning process was followed up with using a stiff brush attachment on the which he held the wood against, this brushed off loose material, and gave the wood a tough sheen. Which would be good enough as a finish if you wanted.

But his last step was to use a rasp file to cut back areas that he wanted colour to take (apparently it doesn’t stick to the ebonised smooth surface)

And so he brought into action another tool I don’t have. An Airbrush attached to a compressor. HE had a duel action airbrush that let him control airflow by pressing down, and colour flow by pulling back on a little ‘joystick’ This looked pretty cool, and allowed him to layer on some colours into the groves of the surface.

Of course I cam away thinking…can I justify an arbortech? An air compressor? A funky hollowing tool? At the moment probably not. But maybe if I find other things that I could do with an air compressor, I might eventually get one. Or if I really want to get into hollow forms, a a nice hollowing tool may become a must.

Despite all the tools on show that I don’t have. I found it an interesting demonstration, and it’s always nice to see something quite different and unusual being made, to be inspired by different techniques and possibilities.

DIY lathe dust extractor hood

Last year I bought myself a serious dust extractor for use in the workshop. It has a huge dust collection bag and a 100mm hose.
I have it sat between my bandsaw and my lathe. The bandsaw has a specific dust port for connecting this type of extractor to which makes life easy. The lathe on the other hand is not so easy.

Basically I set it up with some garden wire providing a wire loop hanging off the bed bars, which I could hang the hose end in, which left it pointing vaguely where I was working. Whilst this seems fairly rubbish, the extractor is powerful enough that it was still effective at sucking up all the dust from sanding etc.

Although it has been effective, it was not really a satisfactory solution. The hose gets in the way, and often wound up not really pointing where I wanted it.

I looked around for ideas for dust collection hoods that would provide a more sophisticated solution. I found generic dust hoods for connection to 100mm hoses, but they seem to be fairly expensive for a shaped bit of plastic, which I’d still need to mount in something.

Having not really found anything that was quite what I wanted, and certainly nothing in a ’sensible’ price range. I decided to make my own.

So I hunted around my garage to look at what I had that might work as materials for this project. I quickly found a piece of plywood, about 5mm that looked like it would fit the bill. I also had a suitable size stick of something like pine, that was already planed and squared that looked good for a support baton which would get bolted to the bed bars.

The top of the plywood already had a big circle cut out from a previous project, and I decided that I could use that arc cut out of the headstock end, and just cut another section to the same dimensions for the other end. It has to be said I didn’t really bother to stop and figure out dimensions. I probably should of, but I basically went on what looked right, and I could keep sizing things up against the lathe to get a good idea.

Once again I really appreciated my bandsaw for making this project pretty trivial, it was very quick to cut up sections to size. Once I had the two end sections I decided to cut an angle on what would be the back top corner. And rather than measure to get it right on both ends, I just cut them both at once. For an exact match.

Then I just set the fence width to match the length from bottom corner to the corner of the diagonal cut, in order to cut the width of board for the back, and similarly set the fence for the angled top section. At this point I’d not settled on how wide I’d make the whole assembly, I basically set the ends on the lath to get a reasonable idea of what I wanted, and just cut both the back and top boards to match.

The idea was to just nail the left hand side to the pine stick which would have a channel drilled out so that it could be bolted to the bed bars just like my tool rest. Again I didn’t really measure, I just set it against the lathe to get an idea for how long to make the channel to get the range of movement I wanted.

I cut another piece of the pine to the same length for the right hand panel to nail to, and decided I’d just connect the rest with hot melt glue. Since it would be fast.

First things first I needed to cut out a channel in the right hand side that would allow my live centre tail stock to pass through, in this way I should be able to set the hood over at least the end of what ever I work on. If I have to work on something long enough that this end needs to be as wide open as the left hand side, I may adjust it then. For the moment I’d rather keep it as enclosed as possible,

This picture just showed me sizing it up against the tailstock to make sure everything was going to fit.

So now for the more complicated bit. Obviously I need some way for the hose to attached to this contraption. My idea was to make a ring that I would glue to the back board, which the hose would fit snugly over. For this I found myself a piece of MDF glued up to a block thickness that would give enough purchase for the end of the hose. Basically my hose has a few plastic guards that form a cross in the hoseway to stop big items getting sucked into the mechanism. These where set about an inch and a half back from the end of the hose, so I got a block of mdf about that thick to give it maximum interlocking space.
As it happened I had a lump of MDF laying around already glued into a block of just the right size. So I didn’t need to wait for any glue to dry. ( This is why I don’t throw anything away!)

Having got the block, I mounted it on the lath and turned it down to the correct diameter.

Here I’m checking it against the hose itself, you can see the plastic guards I was talking about.

Now all I had to do was hollow through it to form a ring. I wanted to leave enough wood to make it a pretty solid ring. I would after all be connecting and disconnecting the hose as I use it with other machines, so I want it to survive. But at the same time I’m conscious of the fact that these kinds of extractors are not designed to have their airways reduced. They lose suction, since it’s more about high volume of air, not high pressure of air. Which is the main difference between one of these and a regular ‘vac’
Anyhow I once again settled on a ‘by eye’ feel for what would work and set to hollowing

And once I was happy with the ring shape, I parted it off and was left with a nice neat MDF ring of just the right size.

With the ring formed I placed it roughly where I wanted it on the backboard, and drew a circle for it’s internal diameter. Which I then needed to cut out of the board. For this I decided to just use my drill press to drill a bunch of holes all the way round the circle, then just use a chisel to cut the connecting bits

This wasn’t terribly neat, but it was fast and easy. I just couldn’t be bothered to get my jigsaw out, even though it might have made a neater hole. I just used a bit of rough sandpaper to smooth the worse of the rough edges and plowed on.

I glued the ring in place at around this hole. I had actually tapered the ring slightly so that the fit on the hose would get tighter as it went over, So I was careful at this stage to glue the wider edge to the board.

With that clamped in place, I decided I was too impatient to really wait several hours for the wood glue to dry, so I got out my hot melt glue gun and set it warming up.

This is the first time I’ve really used my glue gun for a project like this. I’ve read variously of them being used to form quick glue chucks which can then be re-heated to remove later, and so I figured it would be easily strong enough for my needs.

I added a little hot glue around the ring against the board. And let it dry whilst I got together the other panels.

Hot melt glue made this bit really fast and easy, just run a line of glue along the joins and hold for a few seconds before moving on.
And before you know it, you’ve got a dust extractor hood!

I think it’s taken me almost as long to write about this as it took me to get this far actually making it. It really was very quick to put together. And I was keen to put it in place and have a go.
I had ummed and ahhed about putting a ‘floor’ in place, vs just leaving it open. In the end I decided to cut a panel to size, but not glue it in initially to see how I got on.

This is it in place, it only gets bolted on the left hand side, the right hand is just resting on the bed bars.

Next I attached the hose to the back, which was a bit fiddly because it’s quite a tight space, and the host isn’t all that flexible for tight 90 degree bends.

With everything in place I decided it was time to give it a whirl. And so I switched everything on and attempted to sand the piece of mdf still on the lathe. This worked great! I could just make out a steady stream of fine mdf dust going straight into the extractor. Wanting a more visually obvious demonstration I decided I’d just a tool to see how it handled larger bits being cut off.

At this point I discovered the first thing I’d not taken into account. I went to move the tool rest into place, and realised it hit the bottom of the back board. So I couldn’t get the tool rest in position properly. I was now glad I had not glued the ‘floor’ in place, and the adjustments became obvious.
Cut a section out of the bottom of the back board, big enough to allow the tool rest clearance to move around. Then set the ‘floor’ at an angle up towards the hole.

Some quick adjustments later and I ended up with what is now a finished extractor hood.

I’ve now had it in use a few times, and love it. It does a great job of sucking up a lot of the debris coming off the lathe. Obviously the large chunks tend to go all over, but mostly it’s the dust and finer pieces I’m interested in capturing, and it does this without the hose getting in my way.

The couple of issues I have is that it’s a bit slow to attached and remove, and since it only bolts on one side, the hose occasionally pulls it enough to twist the whole thing. I’m not sure if I will do something about that or just live with it. If I add another bolt it will just get even slower to setup and take down.

Generally this was a great little project. Very quick to put together and very cheap, given I used materials I already had laying around as effectively scrap. And I hope that it will help my dust extractor be even more effective when I’m using the lathe, which can only be a good thing.

My new bike, the carrera subway LTD commuter

I wrote before that I was learning to ride a bike again, and even that I’d started tracking my trips by riding with an n810
I did cycle to work a couple of times on Kat’s old bike. I even signed up for a bike2work day last week. Unfortunately no sooner had I signed up than disaster struck on my way home.

The peddle came off! And not just ‘oh dear it’s come unscrewed’ but the threads completely sheared off in the crank. So I was faced with a choice, pay to repair the old bike, give up cycling, or buy myself a new bike.

Well I’d been planning to buy a new bike anyway, I just wanted to prove I’d keep at the cycling first. But this forced the issue and so I ordered myself a Carrera subway LTD commuter bike. Fortunately it was 20% off, so at least something good from the accelerated timescale.

It arrived on Tuesday and I had the fun of assembly. I wasn’t sure how hard this would be. I turned out to be pretty easy. The bike arrived with the bike frame and backwheel assembled with gears, chains, derailers etc in place. The controls were attached to the handle bars, which just needed to be bolted onto the mount point. The saddle came separate and needed to be inserted in the frame and tightened at the appropriate height.

Peddles needed to be screwed onto cranks and the front wheel needed to be put in place with its quick release mechanism. All pretty simple stuff. The most complicated bit was checking the settings of the disc breaks. Though really nothing that you wouldn’t need to be able to do in owning the bike anyway.

The quick release wheel is useful as it means I can hang my bike up as I had been with Kat’s old one, but rather than loosening the handle bars to flatten things against the wall, and have to reset it every morning. I can now just whip the wheel off, and it’s easy to replace.

I inflated the tyres and learned that my foot pump has a broken pressure gauge, that tops out at 40psi. I thought it was failing to add more pressure, but when I switched to an electric pump it’s gauge showed pressure was about right, up at 60psi, so just the gauge had been rubbish.

My first ride on Tuesday was great, I took it easy on the way to work; and everything felt good. I particularly like the stopping power of the disc brakes. Good when hurtling down hill, to know you can stop reasonably well.
On the way home I pushed it (in the rain) and was pleased to make it in about 35 minutes.

I’ve continued to track my journeys with my n810, and have seen a peak speed of 34mph and a best average speed of 12.4mph.

After 2 days in a row, I really needed a break to let my body recover. The saddle region in particular needed some respite. But I’m hopeful that I’m still on an improving path. If I can get to work in the morning in 40 mins, and not feel dead at the other end, I’ll be happy. But some serious training required first.

In the time since I got the bike, I’ve added lights, rear mud guard, kick stand, rear pannier rack, panniers, under saddle bag and of course a bike lock.

None of which are cheap. All told I’ve probably spent 40% of the bikes cost again on accessories. I had really better keep at it now!

The mud guard was a faff, I specifically asked if it was ‘compatible with disc brakes’, the pannier explicitly claimed to be. The Halfords bloke said yes, they were the ones to use… Well to be fair I have used the rear one. It just took a lot more fiddling than I expected. The disc brakes get in the way of the metal supports the bolt to the frame and go to the mudguard. However the pannier came with long bolts and shrouds to allow it’s ‘legs’ to come wide of the disc brake mechanism and bolt in.

this meant I could mount the metal mudguard supports similarly wide. but then I had to bend an couple of kinks in it so that it would enter the clips at the correct angle. The instructions do mention needing the wires bit to enter the clips at the right angle, but don’t mention anything about bending to achieve it.

I’ve still not mounted the front mud guard, since I do not have bolts/shrouds that will widen the mount point. I’ll have to figure something out. Though I was more concerned with the rear guard.

The kick stand I’ll have to take back. I hadn’t checked before hand, but the wire that controls the rear derailer passes under the bottom of the frame and up through the hole I’d need to bolt the kickstand through. Nothing to be done there, I didn’t really need a stand, it was just cheap and I was carried away accessorising.

I’ve not done a commute yet with the panniers, I’m hoping it will really make things easier. Carrying laptop and stuff in a bag on my back takes its toll over the journey. My posture ends up all wrong and my shoulders/neck were feeling it. I did take the bike into town yesterday just to pick up some shopping, and it did make things nice and easy. So looking forward to Tuesday when I next commute.

Overall I’m really getting into this riding to work thing. I’m still not sure how much I’ll continue if the weather is bad, but in the sunshine it is nice. I also like the mechanics of the bike. Yesterday I adjusted the rear derailer, as it was skipping between the top 2 gears. Basically in the penultimate gear, the chain was skipping between the correct gear and the top gear. Adjustments made I shall see how it goes. But there are loads of bits and bobs to play with, and unlike a modern car, it’s all easy mechanics which are user tweakable and that’s cool.

Why do delivery companies suck at their core business?

Today I was working from home, waiting for my new bike to be delivered. And I was given plenty of time to consider just how rubbish delivery companies are.

In my experience they’re all pretty much the same. Not a single on can reliably tell you when you can expect your package.

Sure you can pay for a premium ‘before 9am’ type service. But I’m not talking about needing my package earlier. I just want to *know* within a sensible window when to expect delivery.

As it stands I was told today. And that meant working from home (I’m lucky that’s an option) and waiting….and waiting…

until they come, you are ‘trapped’ in the house, you can’t run any other errands or get anything done outside the house in case they turn up in the window that you are out.

Now I realise it is hard to predict exactly when they will be able to deliver. But surely it is not beyond the wit of man to provide live update of information that would allow you to plan around a bit more.

For me, given 25 minutes notice I could get home from work. that would make a big difference to me. So I don’t need to know exactly when, but ‘not in the next 25 minutes, vs in the next 25 minutes would make a big difference.

I was using this companies on-line tracking, and it ‘knew’ that my package was out for deliver at 9.17. So presumably items get tagged when they go on the truck. Now I’m assuming that the order of delivery is calculated by a computer, to attempt some optimal path. And that being the case I could be told how far down the delivery schedule for that van I am. Based on historical information they might even be able to estimate better what that will mean for my delivery time. If they kept live track of each time a delivery was made, they could further update my position in the delivery sequence, and revise estimates as they go.

Would it be so hard?

Of course, even if somewhere there is a delivery firm that cared enough about it’s customers to provide such informaiton, I’d still be stuck with the fact that very few people you buy from really give you the choice of which provider they use for delivery. It seems odd, since the delivery cost is passed on to me, that I can’t chose from which ever courier I believe offers the best options.

Every time I get something delivered, I am reminded that the world seems to presume that it is no bother to have someone that can wait in, all day, just to take delivery.

A similar problem is going to effect me on Thursday, where I will be waiting for someone to come and inspect my boiler. The very best they could do was offer me a 4 hour window in the middle of the day. That’s hopeless, surely an engineer could easily call contact details to give a 30 minute warning. Just that simple step would make the whole thing considerably more convenient.

I suspect that my tolerance for such things is low, given I’m getting so used to services which work for me, when I want them, how I want them. with things like RSS feeds that deliver news to me, BBC iPlayer that lets me stream tv on demand, Amazon MP3 providing me instance download of purchased music. Hell, even wordpress, which gives me live up to the minute stats on blog usage. I hate feeling in the dark, knowing that the information would be so easy to make available, it’s just that these companies seem not to care about the customer experience in what is their core business.

HWA June 1st – Fancy Turning with David Springett

Last Monday I went to this month’s wood turning group. For the first time in ages I didn’t have anything to show for my own activities. In my defense it was only 2 weeks since the May meeting which had to be moved due to the bank holidays.
And in that two weeks I got my eyes lasered, so I was not allowed in my workshop.

But there was still plenty to learn, and I got a lot out of the evening. This months demonstration was by professional turner David Springett. He is author of a bunch of books about wood turning. And he also brought a long a lot of examples of his work.

What is great about David’s work is that it all looks insanely complicated. And it is far from standard fare of bowls and vases. He claimed that most of what he makes is actually fairly easy, but is make to *look* complicated. Well he succeeded there because most of the stuff on display was daunting to contemplate.

It was truely inspiring to see a whole world of new opportunities in turning. If you ever thought you were running out of ideas for what you can turn then check out his work. He confessed that he has more ideas than time to attempt them.

Another great thing about his work is that there is a lot of logic, maths and science behind it. The scientist in me appreciates the logical progression he took us through with streptohedrons. These are shapes that he turns to have a cross section which is a regular geometric shape with rotation symmetry. In it’s simplest form a cone turned to have a cross section of an equilateral triangle. Once turned the shape is split in half and one side is rotated in relation to the other and stuck back together. This makes some fascinating shapes, and in theory, the turning involves is relatively simply ‘joint the dots’ If you do the maths correctly you just mark out your shape, turn to the right diameter, then turn straight lines between points. And your done. Of course I suspect this is easier to say than to do. But I can’t wait to have a go. The simple progression is simply that if you can figure out how to turn a shape that will have a cross section with rotational symmetry then you will get another interesting shape. Cones have triangle cross sections. Making something with a pentagon cross section, or even a hexagon cross section isn’t that hard.
He went on to show items with ’star’ cross sections, 3 pointed, 5 pointed, 6 pointed etc. Harder to turn, but these create spirals when one half is twisted. Suddenly relatively simple shapes are really producing complex looking objects. Really cool stuff.

Another incredible thing he showed us was a wooden arrow through a hollow glass apple. He had another example through a wine bottle. Why so incredible? Well the arrow is a single solid piece of wood. With flights at one side, and an arrow head at the other. Each too large to fit through the holes the arrow passes through. If it had not been explained to us, I would of convinced myself that somewhere there was a break and glue that I just couldn’t see.

But the truth is more incredible, and again inspiring as to what can be done with the application of science. I am no less impressed for knowing how it is done. This item only works with certain kinds of wood. You need wood that has thick summer growth and thin winter growth, which amounts to widely spaced rings. You also have to allow the arrow such that the arrow head has parallel nearly straight lines of grain running through it. Such that head on looking down the shaft the lines right horizontal.
That’s a pretty specific setup, but I was still not ready for the next bit…
You take the arrow head and boil it for 15 minutes. *Then* you put the arrow head in a vice and slowly but firmly squeeze it until it is flat with the shaft of the arrow. And leave it for 3 days…

Who figured this out?!

After 3 days, remove the arrow from the clamp, and pass it through the holes of your glass form.
And now the amazing part…you stick the arrow head back in hot water and magically it expands back to shape.

I kid you not. I saw it, with my own eyes. Yes the wood looks a little different after this process, but over time it dries again and I would never have guessed that this would work.

This really blew me away, again opening a whole world of possibilities that simply would never have occurred to me.

This is why I go to a woodturning club. To have my eyes opened to amazing ideas that I would stand no chance of coming up with on my own.
This one meeting was easily worth my 20 quid subscription fee (which covers me for a year) Add to that I am apparently the luckiest person ever and appear to win something in the raffle every month.
I promise I only buy into the raffle to support the club. I always buy 5 lines. I am more than happy to ‘pay’ 5 pounds per meeting.
However I can’t remember the last meeting where I did not win something at least equal to my 5 pound cost. This month I won a bead forming tool. Last month it was a block of sycamore. At the rate I’m going I feel slightly bad that I’m practically making a profit from going

In the background I’ve been attempting to help the club with it’s website. Or rather I’ve been pushing them towards using a wordpress blog to run it instead of the existing hosting. The existing site is a bit of a pain to manage, and I think life will be easier with a wordpress based on. To that end I’ve created http://hantswoodturners.wordpress.com and I’ve started putting content on there, including a bunch of pictures I took this month of David Springett’s talk this month.

We’re not quite switched yet, though I think we are going that way. I hope that in future I will be able to give a little back to my club through helping out with content for the site, and maybe even attracting some new members. If your a woodturner in hampshire, you should deffinately be in a club. If you’re even slightly interested in woodwork but have never tried turning, you should come along and see what all the fuss is about.