April 2023 Meeting

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The April meeting of the CraobhEo 2022/23 year took place on the 13th April in the CraobhEo Centre in Aghamore.

Our demonstrator for the evening was Frank Fitzpatrick from the Shannonside Chapter and Journal Editor.

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Frank did a therming demo, often called carriage, cage or wheel work and usually associated with production turning. He came with some budvase examples of this work. Frank’s demo was to turn three budvase blanks using the therming method.

For this he used his own therming jig. Pieces to be turned must be of same  length and have parallel ends.

Jig comes with headstock end and tailstock end, each being a circular birch plywood disc, in this case about 230 mm in diameter. Each disc has six recesses equally spaced around the face just inside the perimeter, octagonal for headstock disc and round for tailstock disc. He also has a prototype for marking out the jig recesses accurately. Finally there are two sets of disc grips, one octagonal in shape and colour coded to fit perfectly into the headstock recesses and the other round to fit the tailstock recesses.

To setup the jig for turning, attach the octagonal grips to headstock end of budvase blanks to be turned and round grips for tailstock end to the other. The octagon grips have numbers to correspond to the headstock face of the jig. Assemble in pre numbered slots. Screw in place for safety. Mount loaded jig on headstock. Can have up to six pieces on this jig and woods could be different as well. For this demo there were three budvase blanks.

Start shaping the first faces (facets) of the budvase blanks using bowl gauge for stability. Shear scrape to finish. Finish by sanding with long pieces of sandpaper to protect fingers. Next rotate each blank to the next position in the jig and secure with screws again. Colour coding on grips speed up changeover. Number of faces you can turn depends on the number of sides on your grips. In this case there are eight but only four being used. Current jig is a prototype. Turn second face to desired shape. Repeat for remaining faces or facets.

Disassemble jig, remove grip discs from budvase blanks. To finish off a budvase, mount the partially turned budvase blank between centres and turn tenon for chuck. Mount in chuck and finish turning the budvase. Mount 25 mm Forster bit in tailstock and drill recess for budvase insert.

Part off using tailstock for support.

This was a very interesting demo and had all in attendance captivated. Budvases are only one example of what could be turned so you can have lots of gifts for family and friends. Thank you Frank for a great evening and for doing the demo at very short notice. See you in Mayo again soon.