Woodbury Woodturners Club

March Club Night Report

Friday 4th April 2025

By Richard Stupples

Welcome all, Please dont forget Emma cook will be here for the first of the invited guest speakers on 12th April 2025, 9am until 3pm

Well sorry its late but i needed to make sure that this ended up as the banner headline for the month

So March saw Tony Bennett provide us with a demonstration of how to turn fruit in time for the May Competition which is to "turn three pieces of fruit"

Again a reasonable turn out of people

Tony first discussed the size of the blanks and how he set up a profile template

with one side of the profile blank being suitable for a pear whilst the other was suitable for an apple and both were gauged to the same diameter

Tony then turned the blank with a roughing gouge

then followed this with a skew chisel to true and smooth the blank for minimal sanding

prior to rounding the end

and then using the spindle gouge to shape the body of the pear

then a clove and a stalk were added to finish the pear off

Tony them moved on to the apple which was a repeat of the pear but shaped to follow the apple profile

Again the clove and the stalk were added after finishing

I regrettably missed how the lemon was gauged and we did discuss as a group how best to finish the lemon

Dont forget the next event is 12th April, Emma cook is demonstrating

February Club Night Roprt

Saturday 1st March 2025

By Richard Stupples

Woodbury Woodturners Meeting on 20th February 2025

Welcome and thanks for all those that attended.

A random selection of the club open turning competition I managed to photograph on the night and congratulations to all who made an effort and took part as I didn’t hear any negative comments, unless you count why certain entries were not ranked in a higher class, but then I don’t know the work of individuals so I wasn’t sure if that was aimed at an individual rather than quality of the workmanship – I’ll tell you who won at the end

A good turn out for a February night, whilst Richard and Sheila manned the sale of tools and wood, Stephen offered for sale an ex members equipment at the back of the room

Our club talk came from Peter Johnson, who managed to be entertaining whilst giving advice and tips on using scrapers and how best to eliminate the raised grain especially on the transition point in the wood where you move from long grain to cross or short grain

Starting by trueing a previously roughed bowl done in green wood a while back (photo above) Peter then proceeded to discuss the

Various uses of the scraper from setting the tennon for putting the wood in a chuck by using a square end scraper or a skew chisel

And providing the final finishing cuts to a trued bowl just prior to reversing it on the chuck, even encouraging members of the audience to come up and try. 

To showing us how to look for the angel hair shavings coming of the scraper to indicate that we are cutting cleanly and finely enough to be able to reduce sanding times to a minimum.

There was talk about scraping whilst the bowl is running in reverse, if your going to do it, please make sure your chuck is locked onto the spindle because a catch could see it unwind, otherwise yes it can be done, that’s my safety briefing over for the next year

The take aways from the talk for me, lots of little cuts and the more steel your scraper has then the easier it is to work away from the rest as it stops chatter

Advanced Competition winner was Andrew Davis

David Prouse won the intermediate Class

Steve Wilson won the Beginners Class

Next Meeting is March 20th  when we will have an instruction on fruit turning

Also may I remind everyone that we will have an all day meeting in April with the Tiny Woodturner, Emma Cook on the 12th April 2025

December Club Night Report

Tuesday 31st December 2024

By Richard Stupples

December 2024 Newsletter Woodbury Woodturners

I have to say what a busy evening and a big thank you to all who contributed to making the evening’s events work so smoothly.

I would also like to welcome our 7 newest members who signed up on the night.

Firstly the raffle, I think that most people would have gone home with a prize if they had bought a strip of tickets. Special thanks to Exmouth Power tools for their donations, as well as everyone else who contributed

Then we come to the speed turning Christmas tree competition – 10 mins to turn a Christmas tree

5 entrants tried this in no particular order

With the winning tree coming from

Peter Johnson with a runner up from John Rockey

We then moved to the cup and ball competition, and it was won by Michael Gilroy with 17 catches within the minute on a borrowed cup and ball

Then to the turning competitions

Shelia Gillam won the beginner class with Richard Burston as runner up

he Intermediate Class was won by Steve Brown and Richard Renshaw was runner up

The advanced class was won by Stephen Long and Richard Pegler came runner up

A big thank you to the visiting choir made up from various choral groups around Woodbury

And we have a Facebook page, its in it infancy at present as I’m trying to learn how to use it but I will get Aubrey to put a link on the webpage and continue to work on using it to promote the group locally.

Otherwise Festive greetings to all

January 16th is the next meeting which is the Annual Awards night.

Initially Stephen Long is demonstrating long hole boring and after the coffee/ tea break then it is the presentation of the annual awards. The evening will also have the wood identification quiz postponed from the AGM.

Just a reminder for anyone who hasn’t already paid their subs to talk to Richard Pegler and Mike Gall about your annual subscription which will be £25 for standard membership and £30 for joint membership. The advice I received was please bring cash.

And for those seeking a project then the February competition is an Open competition.