Recent content by Cimares

If any turners in the Kent area are interested in joining a club, or even just having a chat with members of a club about the advantages, The Orchard Woodturners will be demonstrating and selling items for Charity at the Rare Breeds Centre in Kent this weekend. I won't link it here as googling...

When I was at Yandles for the spring show they had quite a selection of Masur Birch, not exactly a cheap wood, but I think they had some decent sizes. Paul.

Just a comment on tuff saws. I used them for the first time the other week and found their service and support to be excellent! I won't be buying blades anywhere else.

Yeah definatley pop the cover off the belt area and give it a good blast of air once a month if you have a compressor, or a vigorous hoovering!

I had the predcessor to this where the headstock sits down in a recess on the lathe bed, but has the same motor assembly. The only key difference between this and my old one I think is the fact that the headstock can be moved along the lathe bed and the stand is a more durable cast design. I...

Nice, can see where the inspiration came from. Did you have any hair raising moments during the turning? 8-) P.

For a first attempt that's cracking. The first one I made, I forgot to put the clip in place which made for an oddly straight pen. For wood pens I always try and finish with a razor sharp skew, then I can start my sanding at 240 minimum, that way I know I'll only be removing a very fine layer...

On this subject, I picked up some dental wax sheets on ebay for about 20 pence a sheet which lasts ages, these are a pink sheet of wax, about 2 mm thick and about the size of a DL envelope (The A4 folded 3 times one..) I use this to seal one end of the tube before gluing. The improvement over...

Luckily I'd entered the birthday piece into our club competition, so it's up on our website gallery. I won't deep link the photo here to be fair to our webmaster's stats, but if colouring interests you, please take a look. http://www.orchard-woodturners.org.uk/may%202011.html. My coloured piece...

There's several methods for the BLO/CA finish, but the one I find works best (for me) on pens is as follows. Using a piece of lint free cloth. Wet it with a good drop of BLO. 'float' a drop of CA on the patchof BLO Wipe it onto the pen body with the lathe running. It sets almost immediately. I...

Cracking idea putting the leaf in the base. Not something you expect to see under a bowl!

Looks very interesting, several carved examples on eBay, but no raw ones. Will definitely keep an eye out for these.

Thanks for the welcome! I wouldn't say experienced, but just recently I've had the chance to get advice from Les Thorne and Mark Baker whilst the club was demonstrating at the south east wood working show and the quality of my colouring improved drastically. One tip Mark gave me was to...

One thing to also consider Nev is how are you applying the stain? Using a brush invariably means you end up with too much stain on the wood which makes the bleed harder to control, I tend to use a lint free cloth which allows me to control the boundary of the stain better. You do end up with...