Woodturners Newsletter, July 2024

West Bay Woodturners Newsletter is a monthly update on the club activities. This free resource is available to beginner and professional woodturners.

Next Meeting

Program

We would like to have a program where we discuss your home made tools, modified or from scratch. As examples, just to get your juices flowing, do you have a homemade sphere jig? Or faceplates, or hollowing jigs, etc? If you have done something, I’m sure someone, if not all of us would love to learn from your experiences.

President’s challenge:

Last meeting Dave showed some piercing done with very nice dentist tooling. I expect most of you don’t have that sort of tool in your shop. However there are cool things to do with any boring or drilling tool. Ex. drill holes at regular intervals using the indexing wheel on your lathe. Make holes of different sizes in random positions. Fill the holes with accent wood dowels, or resin… Let’s see how creative you can get around this “boring” idea.

Upcoming Meetings and Demos

• July 17: tools and jigs
• August 7: picnic at Cuesta Park, Mountain View.
• September 18 meeting: ?
• October 5 (Saturday) demo: Eric Lofstrom, details to follow

President’s Message

I will miss the next meeting, being at a woodworking “summer camp” for 3 weeks. I have returned multiple times to the Krenov School in Fort Bragg for their summer project workshop. It is more focused on furniture and cabinet work, but that brings to mind the importance to seek outside training and education, other that the personal experiences we can have with our own projects. With our club we have opportunities to see professional demos a few times a year, also other members showing their techniques, or the occasional AAW symposium. However taking a dedicated class at a good teaching venue brings another type of experience and inspiration. It lets you go more in depth that a few hour long demonstration, usually with practice and guidance from an expert. Over the years I have taken classes with David Marks, Stuart Batty and others, and always came back with better skills and tons of ideas to try out. So I encourage you, if you can, to treat yourself to a learning vacation once in a while. There are some local and less local opportunities, you can ask Tina about a selection of currently available instructors she visited!

Claude Godcharles

Last Meeting Review

Wednesday June 19, 2024

Woodturners newsletter notes by Laura Rhodes, pictures by Angela Gunn and Roman Chernikov

Announcements

• July meeting will be a discussion about recommended tool brands, tools that members have made or modified, custom jigs. Members are encouraged to bring in customized tools.
• The joint SVW/WBW annual picnic will be held on August 7, 2024, 5pm-8pm, Cuesta Park, Mountain View.
• Eric Lofstrom will be giving a demonstration to the joint SVW/WBW clubs in October.
• Assorted wooden hand planes and other used items leftover from the June 15 sale are available.
• Dennis Lillis announced that a wood art collector in the Los Gatos/San Jose area has offered to give a tour of his collection, said to be the largest collection of wood-turned art west of the Appalachians. This tour will be limited to 40 people, members of WBW and SVW only, and will be held on Friday, August 16, 7pm – 9pm. Look for signups coming soon.
• Kevin Lee noted that there will be a video of the Sally Ault demonstration made available. Look for the link to come soon.

A Piercing Demo by David Vannier

Dave showed several examples of his pierced turnings, including: butterflies pierced into a white cylindrical lamp; a cylindrical form pierced around painted butterflies; a torus with piercings (with the seamline disguised with piercings; and “Finding Dave”, an in-progress bowl with pierced fish shapes (with one fish going the wrong way). He likes using forms from nature. He’s done turtles and wants to do hummingbirds. Dave advises, “Never pierce without a reason.”

A pierced work begins with a very thin turning. Dave turns the wood green. He often uses birch because its bland color/grain doesn’t compete with the piercings and it can be turned thin. Dave uses a hollowing support system and a HSS teardrop scraper for hollowing. He first hollows the entire interior leaving ½” thick walls. He then takes the wall thickness down to 1/8” thick, starting at the top, working down one inch at a time. He never goes back to previously thin-turned areas. Once the pieces are turned, he constrains movement by: using plastic wrap; putting a hose clamp on the tenon; and keeping the turning in a bag with shavings. Once dry, Dave typically pre-sands his pieces to 200 grit and then sands after piercing with 320 grit. If a piece is going to be wood burned (as opposed to pierced), he typically pre-sands the work to 320 or 400 grit.

Dave uses air powered piercing tools because they can achieve a very high rotational speed. He noted that used dental drills can be very inexpensive. However, the bit is bent over, making it hard to see your work. Also, some of the drills require oil which occasionally “spits” on the wood. To avoid the oil from staining the wood, the wood can be sealed with Shellac. This is a good option if you just want to try out piercing.

Dave’s tool of choice is the NSK Presto II. It does not require oil and accepts 1/16” shank bits. It requires a separate air compressor. The NSK runs at close to 400,000 rpm with the air pressure set at 35-40 psi. He has his dentist save used bits – he prefers the straight (not v-shaped) bits. Dave showed a set of piercing bits from BrasselerUSA.com that he originally got from the late Binh Pho. These are essentially tiny end mills. Dave doesn’t usually seal the wood with Shellac prior to piercing because that causes the bits to turn dull prematurely.

To perform his piercings, Dave tapes one side of a drawing in the desired position on the piece. He slips in a piece of carbon paper under the paper and traces the design onto the work. He then positions and cradles the piece using corn hole bags. To make each hole, he uses the tool to pierce the work, then works slowly around the hole in a clockwise direction. This leaves a slightly burned edge. To clean up the edge, he goes around the hole lightly in the counterclockwise direction.

Good lighting and ventilation is crucial. Dave typically works outside when piercing and uses a fan to blow the smoke away from him and the work. It is important to note that the piercing process creates lots of unhealthy smoke. It is important to avoid excessive inhalation with appropriate PPE.

Dave frequently embellishes his pierced works with paint. Dave talked about the use of interference paints which come white out of the bottle, but show up as iridescent against a dark paint when dry. He’s had mixed results using masking film. He typically uses Grex acrylic airbrush paint, undiluted.

There was a brief discussion of the use of laser cutters to pierce. In Dave’s experience, his laser cutter has a very narrowly defined focal point, so it is not very forgiving. He does use his laser cutter to make masking tape stencils for painting some of the details (such as his butterflies)

Some other options for piercing that aren’t pneumatic include:

• Dremel tool, not recommended, clumsy in the hand and rotation rate is too slow for piercing (up to 32,000 rpm). Available in a corded or cordless version.
• Foredom, better for carving, goes too slow for good piercing (18,000 rpm).
• Micromotor Rotary tool (35,000 rpm)

Presidents Challenge: turn 2+ identical spindles

Make two or more detailed spindles as identical as you can manage.

Show & Tell:

Tom Stutz showed four large wooden bowls from his dad’s estate. He remembers them being used for turkey stuffing during his childhood. A couple of the bowls were marked with the Munising brand.

“As the Wood Turns” by Dave Vannier

Spending time trying to absorb everything i learned at the symposium, both in sessions and the instant gallery. If you go, make sure you spend time in the gallery. It can be truly inspirational, even if the piece isn’t done all that well. You never know what direction it will send you. I watched Christian Burchard’s sphere demo on the recording. He used a slightly different process than I had tried in the past, with some good explanations of why. So, off we go. I found some dry wood, expecting it to be harder to work than the wet madrone he demo’s with, but they should be stable. The first 3 are pretty boring, round, but boring. Maybe i should have done some embellishment like he showed. So, I then took some of the very fragrant apple wood, which is very wet, and turned 3 more. Now the apple looks more interesting. But being wet, I expect it to move, so may have to return them later. We will see. Think I’ll try some smaller ones, but will need a new drive cup before I can do that.

Dave
www.daves-turned-art.com

Woodturners Newsletter Editing Notes

WBW members, if you have a personal website and would like it included in the President’s Challenge and Show & Tell sections of our Woodturning Newsletter, please let the newsletter editors know. Email us at info@westbaywoodturners.com.

WBW board members and committee chairs