Thread: Leaning Pisa 2

I have permission to post this from Les Stennett , Les is a Life member and original founder of The Ornamental Turners Group Australia. Les lives on the Gold Coast and a member of DOT (Decorative Ornamental Turners QLD)

We were overseas on holidays Pisa was part of the tour I bought the plan at a shop in Pisa it’s a limited edition plan mostly Latin
All measurements in metric, three floors up it starts to bend , construction problems at that time, I did not put that in my work, to difficult to show to be effective . they didn’t show that in the plans, I found the discrepancy the measurements they put in.
Material I finally settled for corian Almond colour, it was the closest I could get the marble they originally used, to get a continuation of colour I bought a large piece from a cabinet maker, warning, Corian I discovered is not parallel in thickness the face is nice and flat, the back is uneven in thickness, therefore each ring I cut had to be skimmed parallel, I built it about 15 years ago,
I did about three layers at a time and bolted them together, because of the weight relying on glue was risky, I did use glue in places it was a supa glue put out by Repco at the time ,(for difficult to stick plastics) there would be better glue available now.
Time about nine months
Largest pieces were the rings smallest pieces, probably the columns 209 of them all hand turned, the scalloped ring around the top I cut a strip ( normal tungsten saw blade ) heated and formed it to a circle glued the joint, rebated the ring and attached the piece then cut the scallops, everything was done on my home brew ornamental lathe you see in the photo’s.
I have only shown it at the W / T shows a couple of times.


Each level of the tower is connected by stairs from memory 300 total, the structure is hollow from top to bottom, some time back they stopped tourists from going to the top for safety reasons and the fact that the amount if lean was slowly increasing, however they have got busy and corrected the lean to a safe amount but I don’t know weather they are letting tourists up there again cheers Les