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It's Demo Time

18/7/2017

I've had my first go at demonstrating - and I survived the experience! I've turned in front of people before, but never as the main attraction, so I was rather nervous when I found myself standing in front of about fifty people at my club meeting at the start of July. I'd been asked to demonstrate some of the texturing and colouring work I've been playing around with since February this year. It was borrowing the club's Proxxon long-neck grinder that got me started in this area, so I suppose it was fair to pay this back in some way.

Looking like I might know what I'm doing!

The club has a great audio-visual setup, so there was no danger of not being seen or heard. I think I made sense most of the time, and as the evening went on, I got more into the swing of things.

I started with some texturing using the mini Arbortech blades, and showed how I got started by using the back of blanks to practise on. The back can then just be turned away and no one would ever know you'd butchered it with a rapidly spinning saw blade! You can see this technique in more detail in my Hot Red Etched Rim video. I had done my preparation Blue Peter style, as I had a blank already turned, textured, sprayed black and sanded - all it needed was the colour, which I added with an airbrush.

Two-handed grip for texturing the blank - the headstock is locked for safety

With the first piece out of the way, and nerves less evident, I moved on to a different technique, again on the back of my practice bowl blank. There is no evidence of this though, as it all got turned off again, to show how you can have several practices on the same blank.

I then moved onto using my high-tech cardboard templates with airbrushing a tiger coloured inspired rim - yellow, orange and red as a background with black stripes added. This was finished off with a bit of gold added while the lathe spun, flinging the paint out in lines to the edge of the rim. Fortunately my paint protection measures were effective and none of the audience or the lathe ended the evening with splatters of gold paint covering them!

Airbrush in action...no mask for the demo so people could hear what I was saying

Hi-tech cardboard centrifuge booth to stop paint splatter...

And that, thankfully, brought the evening to a close. I'd survived, the audience had stayed awake, and I hadn't had a catastrophic catch doing a Jimmy Clewes inspired sheer scrape with the bottom wing of a bowl gouge, the handle dropped low and the upper wing perilously close to the face of the blank (though someone did comment that my gouge had 'a grind of sorts' on it!)

Time is a funny thing - the evening seemed to go in slow-motion and also be over in the blink of an eye. I think people liked it and I suspect I'll be asked again at some point, despite saying I'd shown all my tricks and so there was no point asking me to demo again! A vain hope, I fear...

I finished with my latest obsession of splodging lines of colour on and then speckling with black. It'll be my next youtube video technique. It's inspired by a photograph I saw of a piece of multi-coloured glass. The pieces I've made at home like this have been finished with a very high gloss, which I know some people don't like on wood, but it gave the closest finish to the effect I was aiming for.

Exciting action shot of my last platter...was I keen to be finished?

Coloured glass inspired rim decoration...they look shinier in real life!

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Slowly getting there...

2/7/2017

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Well, it's Sunday evening...one week left until I'm putting my latest bowls and platters up for sale. I got four more finished today, so I have 14 ready for sale, once I've given them a wax and a buff, which shouldn't take long (he says hopefully...). I might get another couple or so done during the week.

These four have been around for a while, just waiting for the centre to be cored out. The textured blue one is probably my favourite of the four from today, though it came out darker than I intended.

Two of them have videos you can see either on my website or on my Youtube channel. I'll be doing videos of the other two in the near future. But now my thoughts are having to turn to my first demo on Thursday this week. Some of you know I'm a teacher, so standing in front of a group of people shouldn't be too daunting, but the prospect of that group being woodturners rather than 15 year olds, makes it a bit different. We'll see how it goes!

I do occasionally get to bore my students with my woodturning tales. They sometimes ask me what I do with the turnings. Well, now I'm selling them, but before May this year they just got piled on top of the piano...which coincidentally is where the majority of my sale stock for next week is.

It's been good fun, mostly, getting these new ones done, but I'm not sure it's something I'd enjoy doing for my day job - I don't know if it would still have the same fun or enjoyment attached to it, along with the pressure of having to make sales to pay the mortgage. So it will continue as something I do alongside my day job. That's not to say I wouldn't enjoy doing it day after day when (if) retirement comes along....but that's a long way off still!

Wish me luck for the demo on Thursday!

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It's Demo Time

Slowly getting there...

Stewart is...

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