Woodturners Newsletter, July 2025

West Bay Woodturners Newsletter is a monthly update on the club activities. This free resource is available to beginner and professional woodturners.

Next Meeting

Program

President’s challenge:

Upcoming Meetings and Demos

• August: The joint SVW/WBW annual picnic will be held on August 20, 2025, Cuesta Park, Mountain View.

President’s Message

Last meeting’ program, which featured an open question and answer session, was quite well received. It was nice to see how people were able to talk about the challenges at the lathe, especially concerning “widow” wood. Actually, I have to admit this had a large effect on my own experience at the lathe – I started turning better wood and took a slow and thoughtful approach to my projects. Even I began focusing on a better posture to prevent back aches. This has made a big difference for me.

I think going forward we can have one or two sessions like this every year, especially when no one is volunteering to give a talk or demo. Maybe we can make June the month for this.

On another topic, we will be hosting the yearly picnic this year at Cuesta Park. The club covers the barbecue, drinks, condiments, and such, but relies on members to bring salads and desserts. I will be passing out a signup sheet next meeting, but you can contact me directly and let me know if you plan to bring anything.

Jon Bishop
WBW President

Last Meeting Review

Wednesday June 18, 2025

Woodturners newsletter notes by Laura Rhodes, pictures by Angela Gunn and Roman Chernikov

Announcements

• Next month, Laura Rhodes will demonstrate a spring-pole lathe.
• The annual joint WBW and SVW picnic will be on Wednesday, August 20 at Cuesta Park in Mountain View. Start time is tentatively scheduled for 4pm. WBW is hosting. We invite all woodturners to get creative and turn their own plates or cups to enjoy at the picnic. Don’t worry if you can’t; we’ll also have paper/plastic plates and utensils available for those who need them.
  Also, we will have a best in show contest, so bring your proudest piece. All votes will be anonymous.

Program – Q & A Session:

In lieu of a presentation, we had an informal question and answer session with all members contributing to the conversation. Some of the questions raised included:

• How to evaluate and cut up oddly shaped exotic burls?
• Where do you look for inspiration?
• What tool steel is the best for bowl gouges?
• How to eliminate nicks in the tool rest?
• Could we have a wood swap meet at a meeting?

Roman Chernikov reminded members that name tags are especially good for new members to learn everyone’s name. Nate Segraves offered to bring in his portable laser to our next meeting for customizing name tags. All members are encouraged to turn a name tag and be able to engrave it using Nate’s laser.

Photos from our open question and answer session.

President’s Challenge: Turn a punky piece of wood and avoid tearout

Nate Segraves showed a lamp he created from a beech tree. The tree had been planted at a church in Saratoga in remembrance of one of their parishioners. Unfortunately, the tree died and Nate was asked to make something for the family. The tree decayed with white rot and the wood was almost unusable. Nate soaked the blank in CA glue and used black CA glue to fill holes.

Tom Gaston showed the demo bowl from last month’s meeting. He also showed a very punky apple bowl that he stabilized with a combination of CA glue and shellac.

Edgar Whipple was inspired by James Craig’s 3D printed chuck jaw holders. Not having a 3D printer himself, he made a jaw holder out of redwood, which typically tears out quite a bit. He tamed the tearout on the sides and bottom using a Richard Raffan/Tomislav Tomasic style scraper that he made himself.

Show & Tell:

Jon Bishop made a pair of sycamore vases. He burned the lower half of the vases using a crème brulee torch. The vases were hollowed from the bottom and then plugged. They were finished with 3 coats of poly and buffed.

Jon Sauer showed a gun drill for long bore drilling. It has a carbide tip. He added a Trent Bosch handle and a connection for an airline. Jon also showed a couple of pieces made 20 years ago with slivers of shadow people head turned from boxwood mounted on blackwood. The tenons on the turned heads were left square to make slicing on the bandsaw easier.

Al Holstein made a couple bowls from birch from a friend’s tree that died. The bowls were finished with lacquer and wax. Al’s wife wanted something turned from birch with the bark left on, so from another tree a turned a plant holder.

Angela Gunn made her first lidded box from olive wood. She plans to use it to hold salt in the kitchen. Angela also created a tree from a piece of Douglas Fir using a skew chisel to create the curls for the leaves.

Laura Rhodes showed a Beads of Courage box with fabric covered PVC pipe as the sides and turned lid, top, bottom, and knob from cherry. There were many work-holding challenges to overcome, delaying the creation of this charitable item. To cut the large hole in the lid, she mounted the lid blank onto a piece of MDF using a ¼-20 bolt through the center. The MDF was held onto the lathe using a faceplate ring on a chuck (which left room for the bolt’s nut). The tail stock was brought up so that the resultant ring was captured when it was turned loose.

Bob Bley usually uses hardwood for his stone inlay platters. In this case, he turned the platter from redwood and was concerned that since the wood was so soft compared to the stone inlay, he might sand away more wood than stone, leaving the stone proud of the surface.

Tom Gaston showed how to return a bowl back to the lather after the foot has been removed. He uses a compass to get close to the center point. He has a special plate he constructed to hold the edge of the bowl and he puts the live center into the center point. The plate has a gap in the middle to accommodate the bulge that often develops on the rim of a bowl as it dries. Tom also showed a set of jaw recess/tenon sizing jigs that he made matching each of his jaws. He also showed a hand-crafted beautiful curly maple bowl depth gauge.

Dan Boehmke had some badly warped burl that he salvaged. The center point from the original turning had moved a full inch. He re-established a foot and turned a thin bowl, finished with General Finishes. Dan also had a series of camphor bowls that he was experimenting with Hampshire Sheen dyes, livening up the color with some added Artisan dye.

Tina Chou put videos of many of the instant gallery displays from the AAW symposium onto Slack.

Participation Prizes

“As the Wood Turns” by David Vannier

this month i want to pass on something that we all need to think about. Several years ago Jim Laflin and I helped clean out a shop from a fellow turner. He lived just a few miles from the Church, but had not ever joined our club. Not sure how they found Jim, but when we got there, the one-car garage was totally packed with wood and tools. In addition, he had a rack outside which was loaded with wood. The family wanted it gone. As we dug through the wood outside, rats were flying! At one time there was a lot of really good wood! By this time, there was still good wood, but some had to be thrown away, some just cut up into smaller pieces. In the process of gathering stuff over a couple of weekends, we got to know the family. One of the daughters gave me a hug, and whispered in my ear “never do this to your kids!”

All of this came back to me after our little gathering Saturday, arranged by James Cape. A 2 car garage, a workshop behind the garage, and an outdoor shed all loaded with tools and wood.The group of us spend a couple hours trying to clean wood out to the driveway. Then we loaded it up, and Kelly was gracious enough to hold it for people to come collect some. All of us know Kelly is an active turner, so if you are interested, i recommend you get ahold of him and make a visit. Wood was stacked everywhere. I didn’t see a lathe, but with all his turning tools you know he was a turner. Sadly, there were a few pieces of maple burl outside, but they were so light i doubt there was anything left.

As turners, we have a habit of gathering more wood than we can process. Then we process what we can, pile the rough outs to dry, and move around wood we haven’t gotten to. We hear a chainsaw, and off we go to get more wood! Turning green wood is so much fun. No sanding or finishing, just shavings. Now, with Slack, we have wood alerts adding more opportunities to gather wood. More moving wood around, sealing up what we can’t process, more piles of wood. Discussions of drying wood come up, but frankly I have pieces that have been drying for 5+ years, so i really don’t need to speed up the drying process. I also remember being told that as you get farther into your journey, you find your interests have changed, and the rough outs don’t work for the directions you are interested in now. The piercing, coloring, carving, etc that I’ve been chasing require very different kinds of turnings. But I’ve not brought myself to stop roughing green wood, it is just so much fun! I have learned not to take more than I can process. Extra just turns into time spent moving wood around, and throwing wood away that has gone bad.

So, control your appetite for wood. Remember to focus on what you enjoy. Don’t do this to your family.

Dave
www.daves-turned-art.com

Lesson Learned

You can read the full article here. If the link doesn’t work for you, navigate to https://www.svwoodturners.com/newsletters and pick September 2018, page 12. And thanks to Silicon Valley Woodturners for hosting so many articles!

Happy turning,
Roman

Woodturners Newsletter Editing Notes

WBW members, please let the newsletter editors know if you have a personal website and would like it included in the President’s Challenge and Show & Tell sections of our Woodturning Newsletter. Email us at info@westbaywoodturners.com.

WBW board members and committee chairs