TECHNICAL ‘Borderlands’
60 The Woodworker & Good Woodworking September 2019 http://www.getwoodworking.com
Talking of life, maybe the connections that John
now makes through turning – either with people
who offer him timber or ask him to make pieces
- adds another nuance to this warm, almost
companionable idea of wood as a living thing
whose natural beauty enables us to regard it
is a deserving survivor, meaning that we’re
comfortable with the idea that it will endure
even though we won’t.
A planet-like sphere
Anyway, this circumambulation has given me
time to take the grizzled applewood to John at
his workshop near Hook-a-gate – a curious name,
and one linked, it’s suggested, to a waypoint on
an old drovers’ route through the borderlands
- and for him to set up the blank on a faceplate.
Being able to swing the whole headstock clear
of the bed means that large pieces like this can
be easily mounted, though turning proper can’t
begin until something has been done to improve
its irregular shape. As John removes the most
eccentric parts a little at a time, and tests its
balance often, his chainsaw cuts begin to reveal
the apple’s lively figure, as well as the worm
holes and tracks, and the inclusions that will
all form part of its hoped-for character.
Once the lathe can be run at a working
speed, the first step is to turn the rough blank
to a cylinder; the wood – which might have
been cut as long ago as eight or nine years –
is hard, and John chooses a bowl gouge for this
rambunctious turning because it’s sturdier than
a spindle roughing gouge, with its thinner tang.
The diameter of the cylinder obviously determines
the maximum size of the finished sphere, and
shorn of its lumps and bumps, the apple promises
a globe of around 7in in diameter, which serves
to guide the next phase – working the ends to
round the blank and introducing the beginnings
of some ‘spherical-ness’. For this, a pencil-line
provides an equator from which the northern and
southern hemispheres should curve symmetrically
down to the ‘poles’, where John turns a pair ofbosses that allow him to mount the workpiece
between centres.
Continuing to work by eye, John slowly turns
away the high spots, the tool guided by the
ghosts, or shadows, created along the horizon of
the rotating wood by irregularities on its surface.
He’s conscious all the while, though, of the deep
inclusions, which blur into invisibility when the
piece is turning, but which are waiting to catch
the tools; the apple’s many knots, meanwhile,
play havoc with the cutting edge, sending John
to the grindstone to refresh their edges.
Having shaped the piece thus far by working
on a single axis, it’s time to change to a second,
perpendicular axis. After a quick sand with
Abranet, John removes the bosses and sets about
mounting the workpiece between two cups, and
enters what his wife, Carol, calls ‘mutter mode’- thinking out loud – as he tests and adjusts
their concavity to match the workpiece: “I’ll take
a little bit more; don’t want to take too much...”
When the turning resumes, small pieces of bark
The diameter of the cylinder determines the size of the finished sphere; with
a pencil-line as an equator, the ends of the blank – the northern and southern
hemispheres – can be shaped to curve down to the ‘poles’, where John has
turned a pair of bosses to mount the workpiece between centres
Removing the wood’s most eccentric parts eventually
allows the apple to be spun at a working speedThe lathe’s rotating headstock allows awkward pieces to be mounted clear of the bed
John turns away the high spots, the tool guided by the ghosts created along
the horizon of the rotating wood by irregularities on its surface