Thread: Your perspective

My first exposure to turnings as a very young child was to highly decorated corkscrews & bottle stoppers on my grandparents mantles, very eye catching and so out of reach to a young child. Alongside them were gidgee natural edge smokers utensils and burr (burl) smokers pipes a bit Sherlock Holmes-ish in style and that elusive prize an "ivory" chinese ball. When I was finally allowed to touch it I just could not grasp the skill required to make it and to carve it - on all levels, 5 deep from memory. In high school I came across Raffan then Hogbin a little later and I had always worked with wood alongside my father from as young as I can remember so I guess I thought all wood items in their various forms were normal or typical.

Its true "round& brown" or utilitarian turnings were the mainstay of hobby turning until the late 1970's & 1980's when Hogbin, Ellesworth & others took turning one step further to explore the bounds of modern turning. But decorative "useless" turnings were the future of turning back in Holtzaphel's era. Chinese balls, intricate ornamental turnings from expensive materials became outrageously detailed in a game of one-upmanship. We are only rediscovering those skills & that talent again.

In don't think my perspective has really changed as I have always had an open mind to the many disciplines of turning, including pre-lathe preparation, on the lathe and subsequent embellishment. There is a vast range of opportunities some I believe offer considerable scope for further investigation and advancement. The innovation & refinement we are seeing now is just mindboggling.

As a young fellow I also was drawn to look touch and feel turned items I still have mum & Dads barley twist English Oak candle sticks. When I started turning it was upon request and I used a pedestal drill and chisels to make drop spindles. Then when I bought my Mini lathe to make more of them and get some therapy for my hands I became involved with Ornamental Turners that had me on a path which I still follow and has widened into metal work. Strange though both wood and metal have featured in my trade background and work life. To have it continue and be a hobby just wish there was more hours in the day, fair weather longer, more workshop time to do stuff.

As for wood and its faults I look for them I enjoy blending them into what ever I make.

I guess I am a little bit different as my thinking is pretty close to the same. I will leave the holes or voids if I think it will add to the piece. If I think I can add some interest by filling a hole with a tinted epoxy or resin then I will do that as well. I know that it will not please everyone but as long as I am happy making something then all the better.

When I first started turning, I preferred "clean" wood purely because I had my hands full with working out how to use the tools at the time and didn't need other complications.

Being fairly broke at the time, I quickly switched to any ol' wood I could get my hands on... and as oft as not surprised myself with what was hiding inside.

Now? Now I look for timber with character. Whether it be grain-patterns, spalting, voids or something else. Give me a "perfect" piece of something now and I'll probably do something to it to give it a feature.

Sorry, Andy, I don't agree with you. I have a bowl/hollow form out of red mallee from Stephen Hughes and it is perfect. No voids etc. A fantastic piece.

I started out with legs for tables and chairs, that was wood turning wasn't it? Then came the lump of wood with a shallow depression in the top, that was a bowl. Next, everything became paper thin followed by long skinny stuff. Then things changed so that bits of bark and other bits got left in. Then in the 80's the rot really set in, I started cutting up pieces of timber and joining them again to form patterns. An that has really become a disease, but I will survive. Then I read an article about hand thread chasing, in an English wood turning magazine. Sometimes I sit in the shed contemplating my navel, wondering what is next????

Jim

In relation to inclusions holes etc.
Try and get a gallery to accept an item (even) on commission with the above.
Recently tried here in Hobart with 4 largish Huon pine bowls, 2 had inclusions 2 were solid. All had birdseye in them. The 2 with inclusions were repaired painstakingly with solid inserts.
Both galleries I approached treated the inclusion repaired one's as if every customer who walked into their gallery would instantly be infected with syphllitic welts, the bubonic plague, or worse! Both were happy to take the flawless ones.
Galleries got none.
Swapped one of the repaired ones for a heap of celery top pine.
Others are waiting for future opportunities.

As to how things have changed. I only started turning in 1978 so I guess I'm a relative newcomer. Did notice back then "GOBLETS" seemed to be the "hip" thing to be making. Went to an open day at Harry Arnells workshop near Ourimbar (NSW) organised by the woodworkers group of NSW.
He had a really big bowl full of incredibly well made goblets that he explained were one of his bread and butter lines. Also (about the same time) went to a show in Sydney organised by the same suspects (NSW woodworkers group) where Mr Arnell had some goblets that were so finely turned they were translucent.
Inspired me to get right into goblets for some time..........Boy are they a thing of the past? They look cool, but really only dust collectors when you boil it down. Who want's to drink out of a wooden vessel ? no matter what the finish.
Another thing you don't hear much about nowdays is the cupchuck, or what about the pin gauge?

Originally Posted by jefferson

Sorry, Andy, I don't agree with you. I have a bowl/hollow form out of red mallee from Stephen Hughes and it is perfect. No voids etc. A fantastic piece.

Oh, I'm not saying "perfect" pieces of wood make bland, boring or whatever pieces. They do need excellent form to create a piece that makes one go "OOH! AHHH!" though.

Me, I know that my forms need a lot of work and won't stand by themselves without something else to get a buyer interested. I'm working on it though... come back and ask me in another 20 years and I may have changed my mind again.

When I started turning the timber had to be perfect without spot or blemish, this was in the 1960s, awe shucks showing my age now But these days its anything goes for if it looks ok when finished I have even begun adding paint to a couple of bowls.

Andy and Hughie,

I don't necessarily disagree with you. Some of the work I see from Paul Barton (which I see every year at AWTEX) is inspiring, voids and all. In fact, some of the voids show much about the skill involved in the turning. In fact, I have an incomplete birds-eye redgum platter that is missing in one part. I had the choice, leave it in and have a large diameter or cut it out and end up with a much smaller platter. I chose the former.

Back in the mid nineties I went the AWTE for the first time. I remembere that the open identical pair was won with a pair of goblets and that Giulio entered for the first time in the novice section and won everything.
So called artistic woodturning was becoming popular but most of it was terrible. The great Bert Marsh said most of what is called artistic woodturning would have been better had it been left on the tree. How times have changed with some fantastic artistic woodturning being produced
Cheers Frank.

I think that forums like this and other woodturning ones are what opened my eyes to different styles of turning from coloured to things with inclusions. I now enjoy looking at what some of the fantastic turners on forums have produced and also use them for inspiration, I try not to do direct copies

Ha. Now I know I'm definitely still a beginner. I like nice clean timber to work with, without voids/cracks etc.

I have a large, very hard and dry, Tas Blackwood bowl blank here with a serious void through the middle. helped me start it off a while ago while teaching me how to use a bowl gouge, but it's sat on the shelf ever since, until I feel confident enough to tackle it without incident. I might take the safe way out and fill it with epoxy before turning.