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Surrey Association of Woodturners

Newsletter July 2021

Lockdown Easing Edition Reports, News and Views from North West Surrey

New Members Welcome to Mr Richard Waring Member No. 803 Welcome to Mr David Parker Member No. 804

PAID UP MEMBERSHIP - 118 (As of going to press)

Items for the Diary

*Please Note. Now we can go back to Mytchett as we slowly head out of lockdown

and events are being organised we will need Demonstrators, Stewards, and sales. To this end could you please check and see if there is a sheet out for the event you are interested in on August club night or contact the person in charge of each event their contact details will be at the end of this news letter. Due to COVID we were not able to put out the usual signup sheets for events.

Do not leave it too long as places are limited

August 18/19th 2021 Brooklands John Creasey

18th September Dapdune Wharf John Creasey

9th October 2021 Princes Mead Colin Spain

24th October 2021 Painshill Park John Creasey

31st October 2021 Open Day David Stratton

13th August Practical Evening at Mytchett Club Demonstrations

August 18/19th 2021 Brooklands Demonstration and sale of work*

10th September To Be Decided Professional turner via ZOOM

18th September Dapdune Wharf Demonstration and sale of work*

8th October Two Club Demonstrators 2 x 2 hour Demonstrations

9th October Princes Mead Shopping Centre Demonstration and sale of work*

The SAW Virtual Coffee Shop (Members only) These are still carrying on until further notice.

Opening times: Sunday at 3:00pm, Tuesday at 10:30am and Friday at 7:30pm, for about an hour each time. Repeated at these times every week.

TOP TIP’s If you have a tip to share please email it to me at

colin.spain1@virginmedia.com Keep it short, and if we are

happy with it, I will include it in one of the newsletters.

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Mike’s Meditations from the lathe Chapter 15

As I write these meditations, we have moved out of lockdown and our planning to restart demonstrations at the Mytchett centre moves along. Some of our members may have spotted Colin Rowe and David Stratton at our last Friday demo. They were actively trying out the systems at Mytchett. After a 16-month sleep, it appears that most of the electronics used for our demonstrations performed reasonably well. We are now planning to return to Mytchett for our August practical club night. (Subject to government guidelines) We will be keeping things simple to start with 2 lathes, sharpening, club competition and wood sales will be on the agenda so please bring plenty of money for the raffle, wood, and shop. Most of the wood came from specimen trees at Claremont House and has been donated for the club and charity by a retired woodturning teacher who has downsized his house and moved away from the area. For attendance, as a minimum, we hope you will have had 2 jabs and also have a mask to wear. Regardless of weather, we will have all doors open. Guildford Model Engineering Society Fair was a welcome outing for several club members. The weather was kind on the Saturday but deteriorated on the Sunday. It was a grand weekend out. Big thanks to all club members who turned up to provide moral support. As I have mentioned before, outside club activities allow new demonstrators to have a chance to turn in public with full support of the old lags. So please look out for our next outing at Brooklands. We have set up a small working group to revisit and update our mentoring programme. Several current members who have been in the mentoring programme in the past have been approached to complete a questionnaire. Your responses will help our work group deliver a programme in line with member’s expectations. We are mindful that more formal Health and Safety considerations as well as safeguarding issues now have to be included, but at the end of the day, the mentoring programme is for the benefit of members. Turning has been low on my agenda this month with 3 short get a ways to safe areas. However, I have made a start on a commission for a seat for Georgian water closet. The piece was turned from a bit of 16-inch mahogany board but had to be fitted off centre to a backing board so all the risks had to be identified before any turning. One identified risk was the balancing piece coming loose after a catch, so I was wearing my full- face dust mask. Just as well as I let my head drift towards the wood as I was taking a close look. Yes, the inevitable happened as head and wood made contact but no damage was made by the contact to either head or mask - moral of the story. The Paul Hannaby demonstration was based on a threaded box. He showed us the steps and also the pitfalls of thread chasing. Andrew Hall, our July professional turner showed us how to make a bowl guitar and he regaled us with the Woodturners song something quite different from our usual demonstrations. Finally please keep a lookout for the next woodturning magazine. We expect to have a full page about SAW.

Mentoring Scheme

As you should now know we are updating the Mentoring scheme. There are now two new request forms on line so that members can download the form and fill it in and then email it to the coordinator. These are found on the Documents page of the website called Mentoring Form (Basic mentoring) and Mentoring Plus form.

Mentor Plus, this caters for members who have done the main mentoring scheme but wish to be shown something specific. This could be sharpening using a CBN wheel or the Sorby sharpening system, or a type of turning I.E. Thread chasing as an example. It will be downloaded and filled out and emailed off to the coordinator who will then find someone who can assist you not necessarily a mentor.

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Mentoring is a free service that the club offers and is only available to SAW members.

The mentoring coordinator is now Richard Davies so if you have any queries you can contact him his email will be mentoring@sawoodturners.org and his phone contact details are at the back of this newsletter. Note: To be able to download a file that you are able to fill in on line you must have Adobe Acrobat downloaded.

It has been suggested that us committee members put together a short resume of our lives before wood turning and how we got into it. Two this month Julia and David Stratton on page 8.

This time it is Julia Hammond I have been married to Dennis for 33 years and we have one son, Samuel, who currently lives in Sydney, Australia. On leaving school I joined the Metropolitan police and served for 12 years. I was initially posted to Richmond after which I spent four years on the Special Patrol Group, where I was trained for and policed a few riots. My last posting was to Twickenham. In 1998 I went to St Mary’s University to train as a teacher and then went onto teach Primary in Addlestone. After 9 years I decided to specialise in SEN education and completed my Masters with distinction. After stressful days, I needed a hobby to help me relax in the evening – but what to do? I have always loved the idea of working with wood, but I didn’t know which avenue to go down. My friend’s dad was selling his woodturning kit, so I decided that was what I would do. I bought a shed to house the lathe and initially shared it with bikes, but I soon ran out of room. I treated myself to a larger shed and as they say the rest is history. I joined an adult education class run by Paul Nesbitt, which I really enjoyed. He encouraged the class to join SAW, which I did in 2015. After retiring, I joined the committee in 2018. I enjoy combining my woodturning with craft, pyrography and using colour to create different effects.

Julia Hammond

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Paul Hannaby – IRD June 2021

Our June turner was Paul Hannaby who stepped into the breach as our planned turner was temporary unavailable. The chosen topic was the steps, tools, and process to make a threaded box. Paul showed several examples of threaded boxes, in the style of Bonny Kline (a spinning top box); with a turned pewter thread .and a more conventional design. Paul referenced the master of thread chasing Bill Jones who would cut threads on small pieces and fit to a larger piece to minimise wood (or in Bill’s case ivory) On being asked how to master thread chasing, Bill said get a ton of box wood, lock yourself in the shed and only come out when all the box wood

had been used up. Paul also reference John Berkley books on thread chasing. Also worth a view -U tube “Hand Thread chasing with Allan Batty” Tools The key tools for thread chasing are a male and female thread cutter and a recess tool. Paul advised grinding of any half threads at the ends of the thread chaser and to take the fettle the corners off the lower tool edges to ensure the thread chaser (TC) can move smoothly along the tool rest. Also, the tool rest should be level and smooth - if not the TC will follow and humps and bumps on the tool rest Paul advised starting with a 16 to 22 TPI -coarser threads being larger are more prone to damage when thread chasing. A low lathe speed of around 450 (350 to 500 can be used. Typically woods for thread chasing are dense woods e.g., Box, Ebony, African black wood, Cocobolo and rose woods. Super glue can be used to stabilise some softer woods The TC are sharpened with a diamond hone across the top. Paul angles the hone giving the impression after many sharpenings of having a negative rake The recess tool is used on internal thread cutting to allow a run-off. A thin parting tool or similar is used for cutting groove on the male threads. The tools all have shorter handles although the internal TC may have a longer handle. DO NOT USE UNHANDLED as the tang bites. The wood should be very dry and Paul part hollows then leaves for a period in the house to acclimatise. Basics

Paul placed a piece of box wood in a chuck. A parallel section is trimmed with a gouge/ skew and a recess is cut at the shoulder. The end corner is rounded to allow the TC to begin

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making a thread. Paul starts by striking a thread with the tool cutting at the centre line in a slightly trailing mode and at 45 degrees to the lathe bed. An anti-clockwise motion is used to move the chaser from right to left. As the thread develops, the chaser is brought round gradually to 90 degrees to the lathe bad and the teeth follow the initial strike and gradually stoke after strike the thread is developed. Once the thread has nearly reached the final depth and a small flat remain, Paul applies paste wax to the threads before cutting to depth. Final passes are made until the thread is cut to depth. Problem threads. Run a pencil along the chased thread. If the pencil makes a continuous line the thread is a single start thread. If it leaves an unmarked thread, you have 2 (or more starts caused by moving the TC too quickly. Drunken threads are cause by uneven motion. Damaged or crushed threads are caused by stopping the TC mid thread without disengaging the TC, hitting the shoulder before disengaging the TC. Tapered threads are caused by chasing on a tapered section.

The Box

Paul explained that the blank would be held in the chuck jaws with narrow dovetails. The ideal diameter is known as the perfect circle. This can be tested by measuring across the centre of a pair of jaws and from corner to corner of a pair of jaws. A perfect circle will be where both measurements are the same. The blank will then be gripped along the jaw surfaces and has the least potential to mark the blank. Centre lines are marked on the end grain of a 3 in square blank and the blank is held between a 4-prong centre/ Steb centre and a live ring centre. The blank is rounded with a spindle roughing gouge and faced off with either a sharp parting tool, skew or spindle gouge. Start the lathe at a low speed, stand to one side and speed up to a speed you are comfortable with. A tenon is cut at both ends to match the jaws (diameter and depth) a white pencil (for dark wood) was used to mark the separation points a thin parting tool is used to separate the 2 pieces. An initial cut is made then a second cut about half the tool width cuts deeper. This is repeated to depth but NOT all the way through. The two parts are sawn or twisted apart. Look at the wood and decide which will be top and bottom, any features to be saved or avoided. Think about the proportions of the lid ( 1/3 2/3rds rule, or golden mean 1.618) The lid

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The lid is mounted in the chuck and when it is running true, cut a tenon about 10mm long with a parting tool. Make sure the tenon is parallel and same diameter along the length. Cut a recess with a thin parting tool about 2 threads wide and to the depth of the threads. Round off the end for the thread lead in. Start the thread cutting first striking a thread with the middle of the TC and slowly develop the thread. When a small flat at the top of the thread is left, clean the thread and wax then finalise cutting to depth. Clean off the rounded area and face down to around 3 whole thread, hollow dome the inside of the box and sand/ finish .Make sure that the finish is as desired because it will not be possible or desirable to come back to this area later.

Box base

The base is mounted in the chuck and adjusted until it runs true. Measure the inside of the thread on the lid (trough/ valley) and develop the depth, shape and dimension using spindle gouge, scrapers or tools of choice. Using this method, do have a design for the inside of the box so that the outside can be turned to a matching shape. Leave the inside (for beginners under size so that you can practice thread cutting internal threads. Cut a recess for tool run out about 10 mm below the edge of the box. Ensure this section is parallel. Round

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off the corner. Strike a thread on the rounded corner and gradually bring the tool round thread by thread with a clockwise motion remembering to disengage the TC before reaching the shoulder below the recess. This should be repeated until the thread has a small flat. As before wax and clean then finish thread cutting

This picture shows threads completed for the first pass.

If there is a tight or no fit, it is now time to

trim a small thickness of the thread using a box scraper. Remove about half the thread . you may have to deepen the recess again. Repeat this process untill there is a snug but not tight fit Loosen the lid from the tight position and mark a line of grain alignment then rotate the lid to tight fit. The off set will give an indication

of how much to turn off the face of the box. With a 16TPI chaser, a full rotation is 1/16 inch about 1.5mm. So if half a rotaion is needed, them 1/32nd of an ich has to be removed. Paul used his box scaper to remove a very small amount ontil a fration of a turn was left to be removed later. At this point, any excess wood inside the box can be removed using a scraper or any hollowing tool of choice. A clean surface up to the recess can improve the appearance of the inside of the box. Paul normally aims to have around 4 to 5 threads.The lid can now be shaped while engaged on the box base in the chuck.The top can now be finished, sanded etc. remove the lid and finish the inside of the box The underside of the box is finished by making a threaded chuck( like a jam chuck with threads) remembering the shape of the inside.

By Mike Spaven

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And now David Stratton – Pocket History. Like many of my generation Metalwork, Woodwork and Technical Drawing were core subjects at school, for boys, I wanted to do typing but back then that was just for the girls, which was probably why I wanted to do it. Little did anyone know then how beneficial the ability to type would be with the arrival of the computer. Anyway, with all this practical training (I have GCE’s in both Woodwork and TD) I naturally joined a Bank when I left school and my future woodwork would be restricted to repairs and maintenance of my houses. I eventually retired in 2010, after 42 years with the same organisation, and during a visit to Princes Mead I encountered SAW doing one of their October demos. Like anyone who takes up the hobby I love wood and particularly things made with wood. One of the team present that day was John Creasey, who informed me of the upcoming Open Day and suggested that if I was interested in wooden turned items I should pop along. This I duly did, accompanied by my wife (the real DMU), and we were both very impressed with the range and quality of work on display. Interested, but not yet decided, I attended a couple of the Club nights and was delighted with the warmth of my reception. The best advice given, thanks Jennie, was that before committing myself I should get some professional training. This I did at Axminster, under the tutelage of Colwin Way, where I was surprised to find that many of my fellow students had, like me, done turning at school and were now looking for a retirement hobby. 20 Minutes in I was hooked. Not only did I know that I wanted to do it, but it also answered the question most new turner ask. How big a lathe should I buy? The biggest you can afford. March 2011 I finally joined SAW, in 2012 I was co-opted on to the committee and in 2013 I took over the role of Treasurer following the untimely death of Peter Stent. The rest they say is history.

David Stratton

Rural Life Centre – July 2021

It was Rustic Sunday & Local Producers’ Market at the Rural Life Centre not only

that it was the first day out of lockdown for many of us and a chance to get together once more. Although there was a big difference in the weather from the previous weeks heat wave, Sunday was a bit cooler and spattered with showers in the morning and the in the afternoon the heavens opened and made everyone dive for cover and the odd rumble of thunder. Despite this there was a good turnout of

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visitors, I guess everyone was just pleased to get out and talk to others.

There was an awful lot going on around the site, the train known as The Old Kiln Light Railway which is Surreys only industrial 2 foot light railway runs around the perimeter and was doing a roaring trade taking families for a run, there were organised children’s races, food stalls and demonstrations of wood craft. They even had a band which I could hear but not see but they were good. Our contingent was Mike Spaven, Phil Hamilton, Duncan Clarke, Colin Rowe, Arthur Martin, Jake Sadler, who all did a stint on the three lathes. Then stewarding we had Anna Marie and Max Bennett, Steve Elliot, Ian Clark and myself. During the day we had Mike Bonnicci, Colin Stone and John Sherwood come to say hello.

As you can see from the photos we had plenty of turnings for sale and there was a steady stream of admiring visitors throughout the day despite the inclement weather. Never the less a healthy £25 was donated to RLC.

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Colin Spain