Thursday 9 July 2015

Plates


I've been wanting to have a go at turning some plates for ages, so when I recently got hold of a Birch log that was suitably big, I thought that it was about time to give it a try.


I'm really pleased with the result, but the process made me think that it's probably about time I got myself a chainsaw. I've been putting this off for some time as I find them to be noisy, smelly and quite frankly, scary, but it would save me a lot of time preparing the wood for mounting on the lathe and would also allow me to be more wood efficient, especially, I think, with preparing plates.


I've been using these plates for all of my meals now and I'm definitely converted. There's something special about eating off of wood and you don't get the clanking and scraping noises that you get with regular plates. This first batch are going to be keepers, but i hope to have some for sale soon.

You can buy wooden plates from Owen Thomas and Robin Wood if they have them in stock.

Carving Day



This  is a post I should have done a while ago. Richard and I don't often get the opportunity to get together to do some carving, but during each school holiday we always make an effort to meet up. Last half term we got together at Richard's and decided to do some spoon carving. We thought it would be good to both have a go at the same type of spoon and so we tried to copy one of Richards favourite users, which is actually a copy of one that I bought from a market in Turkey.


It was a nice sunny day; perfect for an afternoon carving. Unfortunately the piece of Maple that I was using was awful and very knotty. It probably should have been abandoned, but I persevered anyway. 


Richard spent some time trying out my Twca Cam and I had a go with his spoon board (I'll post more about them soon).


Unfortunately, during the day, Richard managed to sit on the spoon he was copying and broke it. His copy will have to be his new favourite.