We broke from our usual format of a guest demonstrator for our July meeting and instead set up three lathes which our own members manned, (personed may be the correct phrase to use in our case) and it turned out to be quite interesting. Francis took one lathe and showed his approach to bowl turning, Tom Murphy demonstrated his skill at jewellery making, using a mix of wood and acrylics to turn out some fine broaches and rings and most interesting was the different ways he achieved a superb high gloss finish, among them the use of Yorkshire grit. Ciaria Dowling gave a demonstration on pen making using acrylic blanks and followed on with bottle stoppers, inviting anybody to give it a try. That’s the kind of a day it was, sharing ideas and encouraging members to try different things. Cathal Ryan showed us how he used the Robert Sorby pro edge system to sharpen his chisel’s explaining the settings and angles used to get the best result, he then went on to a lathe to try his hand at turning acrylic in different forms. I showed the lads a simple way to print text on to wood, which can be used to print names on pens to be given as personalised gifts and such like. Jim Hynes brought some prepared banks to show how the Celtic knot can be used to decorate goblets, bowls and pens, then demonstrating how these are prepared very quickly and skilfully used one to turn a small goblet.
Pat Gannon.
The subject for the monthly competition was a yo-yo, not as easy an object to make as one might think, hence there were not many entries, the total was two, one in each section, Chris Hayes in the advanced and Shay Clarke in the novice.
That it for this month, until August when we will be having our annual barbeque when I hope to see you all, work safe.
