Author Archives: Phil Jones

I am the former treasurer and website manager of the Galloway Woodturners club. I also enjoy bodging occasionally. In my spare time I work as an analyst programmer for Dumfries and Galloway Council.

New Users

Due to excessive abuse by unscrupulous merchants of often questionable items (over 4500 posts), I’ve had to remove the ability for new users to register themselves on this site. If you want to register please email one of the contacts on the About Us page and we will register you on the site.

Spoon Carving with Steve Tomlin

25 & 26 May 2013 at Shed Therapy, Dalbeattie

Spend the weekend with professional spooncarver Steve Tomlin and learn the techniques of carving with axe and knives on this fun and inspiring workshop.

All tools & materials supplied

You will learn

·         How to select wood for carving spoons

·         Splitting blanks from branches and larger timber

·         Using an axe for fast, efficient carving

·         5 special knife techniques to shape your spoons

·         Hollowing the bowl with a hooked knife

·         Safe methods of working

The focus on this course is building skills so that you take home much more than just your completed spoon. You will learn a set of skills which are the foundation of any greenwood working and will enable you to go on carving on your own.

Steve Tomlin has been a professional greenwood worker for 10 years and is an internationally respected carver. In 2013 he was awarded a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship in recognition of his skills and spent 4 weeks working one-to-one with master spoon carver Fritiof Runhall in Sweden. As well as selling and demonstrating his craft at shows around the country, Steve has taught dozens of people how to carve on his lively and engaging courses.

Spoon carving is an engaging pastime which is accessible to all, requiring only a small toolkit and easily-found materials. It makes an ideal introduction to woodworking for beginners while the design elements and particular skills will engage more experienced woodworkers.

Two-day workshop just £100.
Only  6 places – call Gavin on 01556 611380 to book.

Or gavin.phillips@virgin.net

 

Lathe Maintenance

Is anyone interested in having a Saturday session on Lathe Maintenance?

In the past couple of weeks we’ve had problems with two of the club lathes: the Coronet was overheating and making funny noises, and the the motor bracket on the M950 broke just before my demo was due to start last Tuesday! Fortunately a bit of oil in the right place and a new motor bracket fitted and both are now up and running again.

While we had the M950 in pieces, I thought it was really interesting to see how the gearing mechanism worked and it struck me that it might be worth spending a day taking all the club lathes apart with the aim of cleaning them up, making sure they’re running properly and getting to learn and understand how each of them work.

Maybe everyone could bring their chucks along and we could have a go at those as well!

What does everyone think?

 

2013 Competition Results – March

The leader board has been updated with the results from March which was an excellent month for the competition: 16 entries and the quality keeps improving. Our defending champion is opening a small gap at the top but don’t be discouraged if you’ve already missed a month or two because only the top eight results out of a possible ten will count towards this year’s competition so there’s time to catch him yet!

Good luck with the pepper mills next month – mechanisms are probably still available from the club shop if you need one.

Cheers, Phil J

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2013 Competition Results – February

 

Blimey, they’re here already… results from last night’s competition:

  1. Bryan Jardine (7.8)
  2. Chick Hampton (7.7)
  3. Robin Gibson (7.5)

I noticed a big difference in the scoring this month which was good – please let me know what you thought of the new system by leaving a comment below.

Cheers, Phil

Full results and the leader board…

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