Woodturners Newsletter, October 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

Ornamental turning, anything with a repeating pattern, not necessarily performed on a ornamental lathe.

Upcoming Meetings and Demos

• November – Board Elections
• December – Christmas Party

President’s Message

I think we can all agree that Jon Sauer gave a very interesting talk on ornamental lathes last month. Hoping to get one myself someday (another rathole to go down, LOL). Maybe if someone comes up with a miniature version I will go for it as there is absolutely no more room in my garage. I know that Tom Mandle has made one that mounts to his lathe so maybe there is hope!

On another topic we are having board elections in November. We have two open positions which must be filled if we are to exist next year, Vice Presidient and Secretary. Please consider volunteering to fill one of these postions. The main duty for these roles is to attend board meetings four times a year, which we hold on Zoom for about an hour.

The Secretary is resposible for recording minutes at these meetings. Since Laura Rhodes, our current Secretary, has kindly volunteered to continue taking notes of our monthly club meetings for inclusion in the newsletter so that will not be required of the new Secretary.

Our Vice President is essentially there as a backup to our President, currently yours truly. Probably this backup will only be required once or twice a year during our monthly meetings when the President is not available.

So again please consider stepping up and filling these roles! If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Jon Bishop
WBW President

Last Meeting Review

Wednesday September 17, 2025

Woodturners newsletter notes by Laura Rhodes, pictures by Roman Chernikov

Announcements

• Guests: Don Burris who has been turning 7-8 years.
• WBW Board elections coming in November
  • Laura Rhodes (Secretary) and Tom Gaston (Vice President) are planning on stepping down.
  • Jim Koren (Treasurer) and Jon Bishop (President) willing to stay on the board
• Reminders about the Mark Gardner demo at Maker Nexus on 9/20.
• Dennis Lillis announced that Anchor Seal is back. He needs clean plastic gallon jugs. Price is $15/gallon, payable in cash or checks made out to Silicon Valley Woodturners

Program: Presentation on Rose Engines by Jon Sauer:

Jon Sauer gave a slide show presentation on the history of the Rose Engine Lathe and how he creates exquisite boxes, buttons, tops and bottles with his machines. He also brought several of his pieces. West Bay Woodturners is honored to count Jon as one of its members. Jon is an internationally recognized ornamental lathe artist. His works have been on display at many museums (including the Smithsonian) and in many private collections. He’s been the recipient of several woodturning awards.

Jon first learned about Rose Engines in 1991. In years since, he has acquired several of these lathes and has honed his craft. Jon uses mainly exotics such as African blackwood for his creations.

In engine-turning, the head stock rocks back and forth following rosette patterns on cams. Rose engine lathes have a long history, dating back to the 1600’s. These custom machines were often owned by the aristocracy who claimed to turn as a hobby, but who most likely employed skilled artisans to run their machines. Pieces were often constructed of ivory as well as exotic hardwoods.

Rose engines are used to this day to create the guilloche engraving on watch dials. Rose engine lathes were used to decorate Wedgewood pottery pieces starting in the 1700’s. Jean Claude Charpignon is a modern-day master of the rose engine lathe. The Ornamental Turners International (OTI) is an organization that promotes this type of turning.

President’s Challenge: A “Turned Piece with Inlay”

Bob Bley conducted a nice two-day workshop on stone inlay at the Palo Alto High School in August 2025. About ten members attended and made some fascinating pieces.

Jim Koren demonstrated his progress with creating custom inlays. He showed two disks, each with a Pacific Northwest Native American fish design. The first was created in Bob Bley’s workshop. The other (8^th in a series Jim created) was significantly improved. Jim also created a live oak bowl. Inlaid in the bowl bottom was an oak tree, inspired by a stained-glass piece in the Greene and Greene Gamble house in Pasadena.

Tom Mandle revisited his platter shaped on his home-made rose engine attachment. He added a wavy groove and filled it with mother of pearl.

Claude Godcharles showed a vase inlayed with the minerals calcite and fluorite.

Kevin Lee finally tried his hand with inlay. His bowl, made from pear wood from the San Jose Rose Garden, was decorated with turquoise.

Mark Gardner Woodturning Demo

On September 20, 2025 Mark Gardner gave a live demonstration for the combined Silicon Valley Woodturners and West Bay Woodturners clubs at Maker Nexus. Mark lives in the mountains of North Carolina and enjoys using the hardwoods that are plentiful there.

Mark’s stepped-rim bowls are often created to rescue bowls that have a defect on the rim. Although he normally uses the bandsaw, for our demo he used a jigsaw. He then smoothed the edges with a progression of rasps, files, and sandpaper before finishing the interior of the bowl with a mixture of beeswax and walnut oil.

Mark focused on a variety of embellishing techniques. He demonstrated use of a wire brush to create a pattern and a home-made mini hollowing tool to make interior grooves.

He showed how he marks a grid on the exterior of a hollow form that will guide his later carving. He has a simple jig that holds a pencil at exactly center height and draws circumferential lines and horizontal lines. These can also be used for laying out spirals around the form which can be filled in with a variety of geometric and organic patterns using a power carver, engraver, or pyrography.

Mark often purposely creates spirals or grooves on the interior or exterior of his bowls that will later be painted with milk paint. Mark typically applies 3 coats of paint, then uses 200 grit sandpaper to sand through the high spots (leaving paint in the low grooves). He uses Krylon Matte Finish as a top coat.

To sharpen and hone his carving tools, Mark uses a layered MDF wheel mounted on the lathe. He uses honing compound and runs the lathe in reverse.

For Mark’s signature handles on his vessels, he rough cuts them in using a small Japanese style back saw and refines the cuts with his ¾” bench He does his patterning work on the piece (with power carver or engraver) after carving the handles and only after the piece is thoroughly dry.

Show & Tell:

Jon Bishop created four boxes. He finally feels he has his box making technique perfected. He turns and finishes the base’s bottom which features a short foot whose diameter closely matches the optimum for his chuck. He then grabs the base by this foot and hollows out and finishes the box base. For the lid, he creates a dovetail recess on the lid’s interior so he can grab that with his chuck to finish the lid’s upper surface. On a couple of his boxes, he added some extra wood for a lip to fit inside the base, helping to preserve the continuous grain from base to lid.

Dennis Lillis finally finished a basketweave box of pearwood which had sat in his workshop for years. He used a beading tool to create the ridges and colored selected areas with Faber-Castell ink pens. The lid is decorated with septarian marble.

Kelly Smith showed a very large bowl from sugar pine. It was twice-turned and finished with walnut oil. He also created more mushrooms using his latest two-piece turning technique – these of cherry, apricot, and birch. Kelly also showed a cherry vase and he gifted a walnut light house to Dave Vannier.

Tom Mandle showed a square bowl with a “gravitational force” shape hollowed out.

Claude Godcharles showed how two failed pieces could come together to make a lamp base. The upper part was created from a punky piece of pepper tree burl and the lower part was a partially failed bowl. Claude also showed a bowl with surface texture created with burrs.

Nate Segraves created a natural edge mushroom shaped box with a maple burl cap and a walnut burl base. He also showed an old growth figured redwood bowl with a natural edge. The wood came from a large redwood burl slab discovered when cleaning out an old garage workshop. Nate counted at least 50 growth rings just within the small bowl.

James Craig brought in a new variation on his 3D printed chuck jaw wall mounts. He showed a maple bowl which is still a work in progress and showed some of his laser-engraved test pieces created for his SVW laser talk.

Dan Burris showed a eucalyptus bowl made from a tree in his 97 year old uncle’s yard. He created two boxes made from wood and resin and a black oak lidded bowl.

Kirsten Mouradian made a nest of bowls in her PAAS woodturning class. One of them, turned green, had already warped considerably. The bowls were finished with tung oil She plans to contribute the bowls to Canopy for their fundraiser.

Dean Caudle displayed two concept pieces. One was a square sushi try with an offset soy sauce well. The other was a square box. Both were made of grenadillo.

“As the Wood Turns” by David Vannier

So much to learn, so little time. I would like to make sure we thank Dean and his team for all the work that they put into bringing Mark G for a fun demo day. Also a special thanks to the AV team, Mark and James, who work behind the scenes and make it possible for all of us to see the action. I had been curious how Mark did some of his texturing. On his hollow forms. I’ve always tried to experiment with what the demonstrator showed us right away. It reinforces what they teach us, which if we wait we tend to forget. So, with an hour the next days took a stab at his rim modification.

it did not have a crack, so this is just an embellishment. I’m not a milk paint fan, so wasn’t interested in doing that. Next i was going to try his circle idea on the side of a cup. But, life got i n the way. Between not having any time, and 3 iron bark trees coming down, i lost focus. I’ve tried to stay on a wood diet, but i failed badly. Thanks to Jim K for rescuing me, as my saw first didn’t want to start, then i ran out of gas. He brought gas, and kept me going. In my younger days, we would run the saw all day long. Now, i limit myself to 2 tanks of gas. More means i am going to feel it the next day. Well, i did 4 yanks, and there were still 2 large pieces that i really wanted to take home. But they needed a lot more cutting, and i just didn’t have it in me. One chunk had not be pushing 800lbs. My lift table is rated at 750, and it was struggling. I did too. But i now have it all prepped to go on the lathe.

The first piece i turned made me question my plan. After roughly 3 hrs. I developed a bad allergic reaction. I was wearing my powered respirator, but that didn’t stop it. I’ve not had a skin reaction to poison ivy, and to the best of my knowledge never been exposed to poison oak. But guessing that there was poison oak on at least one of the trees. I changed the filters in my respirator, and was able to turn the next day without problems. Morale of this story, is protect yourself.

Dave
www.daves-turned-art.com

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