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I write occasional daft emails to fellow members of my woodturning club.  As we get new members, some of them are stupid enough to ask me for some of the older emails.  As time passes and the read them, they will learn never to ask again - but meanwhile I have to dig into my email archives and find old items and then send them one by one to the unlucky recipients.

You would think they would find more useful things to do with their lives than read the sad wittering's of this old fool and try to make something of their lives - but no!  Any that appear here will do so in reverse order, there are many reasons for this, but logic is the main driver.  If there is one thing I have - it is logic.  Not much else to be fair - but I do have logic.

I have only recently worked out how to put the pictures in, so many are still missing.  I will continue to work on it.

Writer's picturePhil Boulter

12. Turning up somewhere new - July 2014

From: Boulter, Phil (DSI) Sent: 08 July 2014 09:13 Subject: Turning up somewhere new

Hi all

Welcome to another rant/drivel/diatribe/waste-of-time


I will see most of you tonight at the members evening I hope – don’t forget we are in the new hall at Brimpton – see the website for directions, or follow the ones I have sent out a couple of times already. We had our trail run in the hall on our last Saturday workshop and it was really good, parking is good and the hall facilities are really quite nice. Best of all, it has proper toilets. (You can always tell you are getting old by the fact that you measure the acceptability of a place by how nice the toilets are!!)


Tonight’s meeting (yes – it is tonight – how did that come around so fast) is a members evening – so we all get to play on the lathe and turn something, or part of something. We will split up into teams, and after much consideration, careful examination of the turned pieces and some very careful judging – my team will be declared the winner. You will find this is the only fair result.


We are going to be at the hall in Brimpton until we upset them, or until the old hall is finished. Sadly – as soon as the old hall has its facelift (due on 20th September I believe) the bridge over the railway closes on 21st September which means direct access from the A4 is cut off. Did I just hear someone say “What good planning”?

The next Saturday workshop on 26th July is all to do with Weedpots and small vases, this is partly to give us some small to medium hollowing experience, and partly to warm us up for the fact that the competition in August is…. – a trio of small vases or weedpots. “Planning” – there’s that word again.


Talking about planning, I am in the process of keeping my daughter happy – she is throwing a party in September in Wales, and wants to give everyone a gift – so she has decided that she will ask her big brother to produce these gifts – a turned pen for everyone who turns up – 60 of them (I think she has invited everyone who lives in Wales – or at least Wales High Street. I make these things 3 or 4 at a time, ten at a push, but 60!


Last weekend my bandsaw went into overtime and cut up some nice pieces of burr elm, and some Australian wood who’s name escapes me, plus a piece of some-ones old sideboard which had a distinct pattern. That was the easy part – have you ever drilled holes through 120 pen blanks? I decided to make it as easy as possible and purchased some special pen blank jaws for my chuck – Robert Sorby items which go onto my Versachuck, what a result that was. You only get two jaws – but they are long and hold the blank square every time – as you can see by the picture.


If you are serious about turning a lot of pens – I can certainly recommend these for drilling blanks, they completely remove the need to spend even a few seconds each time trying to get the blank square in the chuck, they just sit square straight away without you having to think about it.


Any road up, next comes the gluing. I have a lousy day in Plymouth yesterday and for light relief when I got home at about 9pm I decided to glue brass inserts into my 120 drilled blanks. I forgot I had to rough-up the brass tubes first – my fingers were seizing up by the time I had done that for an hour – and then it was on with the rubber gloves (leave it!!) and out with the gorilla glue. 12.45am I finished… I thought this was meant to be fun. Anyway – nearly ready to turn now, so all I have to do it spend a couple of hours milling the end of the blanks and I get to the fun part – woodturning.


I wonder if my sister knows what she is putting me through?

I am not going to hang about this morning – I am meant to be working after all. I hope to see you this evening – I will be there with my small lathe – and we will have others too – enough for us all to have some fun.

Meantime a question – how bad is Louis Suarez’s bark?

See you later


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