January 2024 Meeting

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The January meeting of the CraobhEo 2023/24 year took place on the 1st February in the CraobhEo Centre in Aghamore.

Our demonstrator for the evening was Steve Twydell.

Steve’s project for the evening was a cube inside a cube.

Prepare 80 mm cube blank and mount between centres. Note you will be working with side and endgrain in this project. Steve uses a template (see photo).  Start by cutting a mortice into the cube from the tailstock end with a skew. Use template for width which is very important. There will be a nub in the middle but won’t affect chucking. Repeat on two other side faces of cube. You can now hold your cube in the chuck and work on any side on side.

Next mount cube in chuck and bring tailstock up to align. Using the template for width and depth (38 mm wide and 28 mm deep), cut first mortice into the cube being careful to abide by measurements on the template. Tools used were skew and scraper. Remount the cube on remaining five sides and repeat. Endgrain is more difficult to work than sidegrain so extra care needs to be taken. Use pushing cuts. Good lighting also important.

Finally comes the parting off. Use tip of skew to make a cut into the mortice side at the bottom.  Final cut is with a special angled hollowing tool to depth of 10 mm into the side (see photo). Repeat for other mortices. You will start to see daylight inside as you progress. Avoid touching the front edge of the inner cube with the tool. The last mortice will release the inside cube. Further work can be done cleaning up the inside by hand or using a Dremel. You end up with a perfect cube

Thank you Steve for a very engaging and technical demo. We can now go back to our workshops and attempt to have a go ourselves. Also, our thanks for stepping in at short notice on the evening, much appreciated. Well done.

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