Our April meeting was our annual seminar, a time to get together and enjoy a day of socializing with fellow members and friends from other chapters, swapping information and admiring the skill of our guest demonstrator Max Brosi. Max a turner of great artistic ability and imagination enthralled us with his display of finished pieces which he brought and his method of achieving his results, I would describe his work as abstract sculpture. Max first had a few words to say on safe working on the lathe, the practice of stopping the motor when making adjustments to the tool rest for one and care in what you wear, no loose trailing clothes that could be caught. That done Max proceeded to turn his first piece, an octahedron he called it, I’m not so sure about that but it will do till someone tells me different. This started as a blank around 150mmx150mm and 240mm long in ash and from this Max turned a sphere leaving a spigot each end. Then using the indexing on the lathe, he marked four points around the centre of the sphere giving him six axis points which included the spigots he already had. Using steb centres he developed these into four more spigots, then using these in the chuck, he drilled out all six to create a six-armed pipe joint. (For the want of a better description} Swapping these arms around in the chuck he was able to turn the outside shape and the finish was a scorching with a blow lamp, I hope the photos tell a better story. Max turned three more pieces which I am not going to detail as I could fill pages, suffice to say they were equally impressive as can be seen from the pictures. Max told us the hard part was in the thinking out of how to create the picture he would have in his head; I can believe that. Thank you, Max, for a brilliant demonstration we look forward to seeing more of your creative work.
