Break the mould

Posted on 7. October 2015 by fuzzy

One of the most inspiring presentations at the AWGB seminar, well, for me at least, was the one from Ambrose O’Halloran. He comes from Ireland, where he lives in County Galway. For those of us who are a little shaky on their geography, if you walk from Dublin straight west, that’s where you fall into the sea.

There was nothing particularly spectacular about the piece he made during the presentation. No, the true value lay in his approach to his work, and how he managed to get this message across to the audience.

His basic message to us was: do not use the classical engineering thinking, which asks first “what”, then “how” and finally, maybe, “why”. Go around the circle half way and ask first “why”. Why is this shape this way and not any other? Or, sometimes even better, “why not”. Why not make something that breaks all the rules?

His thinking owes a strong legacy to David Pye, who was the professor of furniture design at the Royal College of Art from 1964 to 1974. During that time he wrote two books, which have become standard literature at many art colleges. In the second of his books, “The nature and Art of Workmanship”, he proposes the workmanship of risk, by which he means “workmanship using any kind of technique or apparatus, in which the quality of the result is not predetermined, but depends on the judgment, dexterity and care which the maker exercises as he works”. This is opposed to the workmanship of certainty, where the maker uses the same skills to create a process where the output is completely predetermined (in other words, mass production).

It is clear that if we are to truly break the mould and create works that are unique and have qualities that differentiate them from mass production, that we must use the workmanship of risk. Every time we create a new piece, we must risk complete failure at any stage of the creation. This becomes even more true if we want to break new ground, as there will not be any other makers we could use as a reference.

I always knew it: life is a risky business, and nobody gets out alive. So let’s get on with it.

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Things to come

Posted on 6. October 2015 by fuzzy

I started using a scratch book quite a long while ago, and over time several ideas have been collected in there. Some of them even made it into items that are now for sale here.

When I go through the pages, a recurring theme is boxes. Mostly suspended boxes. One box I finished lately, is actually NOT from a drawing (see Desk Box in the product catalogue). However, another one I am working on is turning out to be quite a bit more complicated that I anticipated. So far I have managed to get some of the bits and pieces, and the only thing finished is the lid:

Curly-ash-lid

A very nice piece of curly olive ash, with knob from leadwood. I promise you, it gives no hint whatsoever to the final piece. You’ll just have to wait and see…

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A donation

Posted on 21. September 2015 by fuzzy

Three weeks ago I received an email from the contact page of my site, from a gentleman saying he had some yew in various (smallish) diameters and whether they’d be any good for me. So I replied quite enthusiastically, but didn’t get a response. Luckily a phone number was included, so a week later I contacted said gentleman, and one hour later I was in his garden.

Let me tell you: what a wonderful property. Must be going on 2-3 acres of ground, with loads of old trees, a tennis court, a dressage arena, some stables and a beautiful house smack bang in the middle. We had a most lovely conversation while he showed me around. I won’t disclose any details, as I am pretty sure he would like to have his privacy undisturbed.

In the end (and with the help of a saw he lent me) I had collected a small pile of yew, all between 3 and 5 inches diameter and about 3-5 foot long, plus one half of a beech trunk about 5 foot long and 14″ wide. He had both halves, but one of them had lain face up on the ground for several weeks and already showed severe cracks, so I left it behind.

When it came to discussing a price, he thought about it for a short while, and then said “You know, I like you and I trust you. So why don’t you make me a few pieces I can show to my friends and say ‘These are from a tree in my garden’ instead?”

Well, what can I say. Obviously I agreed to it. Clearly he had seen some of my work on the site, and liked it. I get some (almost) free wood, probably some exposure to his circle of friends, and he gets some nice turnings in return for wood that otherwise would have gone onto the firewood pile.

And it gets better: The whole property was originally developed by a landscape gardener. This was clear from the layout of the trees and all the different species (there must have been at least 5 different types of sycamore/maple in that garden, and plenty of ash, oak, yew, holly, beech, to name just a few). He only bought the property a few years ago, and prior to that it had not seen much work in the garden. In consequence all the trees were overgrown, and some needed felling. We had a bit of chat what to do with those trees, and hopefully I will be in a position to get plenty more good wood from this source over the next few years.

Faith in mankind is restored, at least a little bit. There are generous people out there, and every now and then you run into them.

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Bye bye, green goddess. Hello, white goddess!

Posted on 31. August 2015 by fuzzy

It’s done. I have finally ordered myself a proper wood lathe. It’s a Twister FU-200, from Simon Hope. The lathe itself is a German make, with a 16″ swing and 28″ between centres. And since I intend to go quite big with some pieces, I also ordered the bed extension, which, together with the swivel head, will give me a maximum diameter of 32″.

I have been playing around with this idea for quite some time. The green goddess is a metal lathe, and not ideal for wood turning. I can get the speed up to about 2k rpm, but only for abnout 10 minutes, and then it starts to get very warm. The saddle gets in the way of many cuts, and I am limited to 10″ diameter. Actually, more like 9″, since you always need a little bit to just get your work piece round. And at that diameter, I can’t get the tool rest where I want it, it’s all dictated by the general build of the machine. As said, it’s a metal lathe, and I am abusing it.

So now, I have to rearrange the workshop. Nut just a little, but quite majorly, because I don’t intend to sell the green goddess. After all, it’s good for a lot of things. Metal turning, for a start, which allows me to combine metal and wood work into one. And it comes in very handy as a disk sander.

Well, I am almost there. Had to box up a lot of the model building stuff, and throw out some other stuff, but it’ll work. I can’t tell you how exited I am!

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OMG

Posted on 10. August 2015 by fuzzy

I came back last night from the 2015 AWGB seminar. Oh my god! Even after several drinks and hours, I was still mentally on total overdrive. And today I felt completely exhausted, mentally and physically. I’ll need a few days to recover from this.

But let me give you a brief report:

Arrived around 11:00 on Friday, check-in was no problem, then grabbed my box with turnings and walked over to the seminar building (about 15 minutes walk). Long queue at the gallery check-in, so I went for lunch with some fellow club members from the West Mids club. After lunch I managed to get my pieces into the gallery, and even had a quick pre-snoop around. Let me tell you, impressive is no word. Have a look for yourself here.

Then the first demos. I had marked out which ones I wanted to see, but that plan went out the window quickly. In the breaks in between, I had already exchanged a few friendly words with people like Nick Agar, Phil Irons, Simon Hope, Mark Hancock and a few others.

I ended up being quite early at the restaurant for dinner, so had a bit of time and killed it with a double G&T. When I eventually walked back into the restaurant, there’s a table right in front of me, with Nick sitting next to Ashley (Harwood, from the USA), and waves me towards the table. Did I feel pleased? Stupid question. We had (counter-clockwise) Simon Hope, Carlyn Linsay, Joey Richardson, Nick Agar, Ashley Harwood, Cynthia Gibson and Phil Irons at the table, plus 3 folks who had come all the way from Spain. What a privilege! And what good fun these people are.

Dinner went in a flash, and then it was Ray Key’s time to give his speech about the history of wood turning in the UK. Clearly he’s the man for the job, since he’s been there forever and a day. Unfortunately he overdid it a little, and after about 40 minutes (and he had only just arrived in the 80’s) just about everybody around the table started rolling their eyes. Simon was the first to get out, under the pretext of needing another drink. Never came back. I was next, and gradually people started leaving and filling the bar. And the party started. No loud music, but good conversations everywhere. I don’t even remember everybody I spoke to, must have been several dozen people. I ended up in bed around 02:00 in the morning, with no alarm clock (my phone had run flat) and wondering what the next day would bring.

I stopped wearing watches a long time ago, and have realized since then that my mind and my body clock are actually very reliable. When I woke up the next morning, I had no idea what time it was, but later found out, it must have been 06:45. And that was on the spot, since breakfast was served from 07:00 to 08:00, with demos starting at 08:30.

It was a hot day, but with a huge variety of wonderful demonstrations, although to be honest, Mike Gibson was a little disappointing. At the end of the day, about 25 pieces from the instant gallery were moved to the biggest auditorium, and we had a critique session by Nick and Ashley, with the odd comment from Ray (Nick had threatened not to give him the microphone if he overdid it). All good feedback, with advice on where to improve those very last tiny details that sometimes make the difference between winning a competition and coming second (although there was no competition here to be won). The final two pieces were a lidded box from Mark Sanger and a big hollow form from Ray Key himself. Both got standing applauses from the audience, and we were off for dinner.

No repeat from the day before, and for a reason (see a little further down). I ended up on a table with Marcel van Berkel from Holland (who also did a one-off demo slot on Sunday where he managed to set off the fire alarm) and a retired lady who had run a police station with 120 officers. After dinner a short speech and then the main attraction of the evening: an auction of 21 pieces, all from the estate of Pablo Nemzoff, and finished by 20 turners on invitation (the 21st was a blank which was signed by all 20 turners). I managed to get my hand on 2 pieces (Ray Key and David Springett), and this auction was concluded by a very warm and heart-moving speech by his daughter Einat. From there on followed another auction of pieces donated by various people, where apart from having a long chat with Ashley I also managed to buy another piece by Mark Hancock.

And finally everybody moved into the bar again. I ended up outside, being a smoker, where another conversation with Ashley and Mark ensued, followed by an even longer one with Einat and her sister. When the bar closed at 01:00, things started to slow down a little, and eventually Einat, Mark and myself ended up sitting outside our block of flats, with some beer and some cigars, and chatted until around 03:00.

Sunday started similar to Saturday, and sometime during the morning the pieces for the year-long wandering exhibition were selected. I have no words for the joy I felt when I realized that one of my pieces was in that collection. I must have looked like a complete idiot for the rest of the day, walking around with a grin stretching from one ear right to the other one.

There’s lots more to tell, but I won’t bore you all to death, so let me stop here by saying that this was an energizing and exhausting, joyful, inspiring and overall fantastic weekend.

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