POP Exhibition

Embellishing started 

POP Exhibition

Professional Outreach Programme of American Association of Woodturner 7th Annual invitational exhibition themed 'HARMONY'
Exhibition will be at Gallery of Wood Art in St Paul Minnesota March 3rd - June 7th 2013 then
American Association of Woodturners Symposium Tampa Florida June 27th - 30th 2013.
The piece must fit inside a 6" cube
Some part of the piece must be woodturner....

Sheoak vase with wave and coral design drawn

Online Exhibition

http://crafthaus.ning.com/group/crafting-this-antipodean-place

Ross Annels curated this online exhibition for Crafthaus.... well done Ross, great job

Natural Edge Bowls

Some of the 40 bowls finished  awaiting packaging and shipping to galleries for Christmas

Natural Edge Bowls

A day at the coal face turning outside shape of 27 natural edge bowls. Galleries are needing bowls for Christmas holidays. Thought I'd fossick through my burl bins finding burls I've had for over 5 years. Forgot I even had some of these, salmon gum, yorkgum, rib fruited mallee, red morel & jarrah. So with an initial whiz past the bandsaw then onto the lathe I've got 1 gallery nearly covered.  Just 4 more piles like this and I'll be at the end of the week.

Kalgoorlie

GSTIG (Goldfields Specialty Timber Industry Group Inc) invited me to demonstrate a 2 day workshop out here in Kalgoorlie at John Paul College. What a group these guys are....Ian and Baden really look after you and those specially made sausages at lunch are great. 
All will be  turning a vase then embellishing the outside. I'm trying to push a few in the group that have been turning for quite a while and clearly need some encouragement to take the next step....so boys the inside of the vase will be nice and even. We had a few malfunctions yesterday with 4 vases departing their lathes, but nice to see these guys back again today to try again. 
Just love goldfields timber and will organise to freight different boards back to the coast to use in special projects

JAM Factory Adelaide

Visited JAM Factory in Adelaide to catch up with a friend who now works and creates furniture in the studio. Also was asked to speak and present a power point for other disciplines eg glass, ceramics, jewellery and metal sculptures. 
Oh and the wife supported the retail space......supporting other artists she calls it.
What a wonderful space 

Adelaide

Spent the weekend in Adelaide demonstrating for 2 days, hope everyone went away armed with inspiration to embellish and carve their next piece. 
Enjoyed the time there.........thanks

Window to a Sea Soul (The name could change)

What happens when you need a limestone block as the base for your sculpture and you realise limestone blocks are to heavy and to soft for practical use inside.
You make your own fake block.

South West Showcase Sculpture (un-named)

I oiled the Tuart base using Livos oil, this gives a rich finish. The sculpture itself will be sprayed.

The last word on this piece

I was unsure if this piece was achievable, it turned out to be an interesting piece, turning out how I thought it would. Quite challenging at times. 

I'm not disappointed with it.

South West Showcase Sculpture (un-named)

 I needed a base for this to stand on, using a piece of Tuart 50mm x 200mm x 1.2m. Tuart is an underestimated wood which I really like and it lent itself to this piece. I wanted a windswept look, 3 dimensional, the wind over the sand. This I carved using a Lancelot tool with an aggressive wheel. I refined this using gooseneck scrapers, finishing with 800 grit sandpaper. 

 
This sculpture stands on spines 8 and 9.

South West Showcase Sculpture (un-named)

The sculpture was sanded before I glued it all together  as there was going to be places I would not be able to get to. This was sanded to 600 grit.I carved the edges when it was standing to make sure the profile looked right, I wanted the sculpture to be 3 dimensional, It needed this to make it look more dynamic. Hopefully when people look at this piece there will be a lot of elements they can see.

South West Showcase Sculpture (un-named)

I did a dummy run on putting the sculpture together working out which spines needed to be fitted in what order. 

All the time the sculpture was still lying on the piece of paper, not being able to see the other side or knowing if the sculpture will support itself. The rod was still being supported by the small mdf blocks. I had to also make sure all the outer ends where at the same height, if you move a spine in the centre it would shift it's outer end and vice versa. A couple did move on me which I rectified when carving. 

After gluing and waiting 24 hours I finally stood the sculpture up. I did not know if it would stand and or support itself, also not quite knowing what the other side looked like.

South West Showcase Sculpture (un-named)

I was then ready to glue this sculpture together.
I started with the two legs, which were to support the piece, these, I made sure were exactly right. Gluing and lightly clamping them together making sure they were intersecting at the point I wanted them to. I used the table I was working on as the datum with the drawing underneath as a reference. I then set the stainless steel rod up at the right hight, cutting some blocks at 57mm (the rod was 8mm thick) . Then glued another one. After these had set I put two screws in to hold these 3 together.  

 To explain the spines are numbered and had to be glued in the right order. I started with the  legs which were numbered 9 and 8 gluing and lightly clamping these together, then glued 7. After these had set I put two screws in to hold these 3 together.. Then I glued 6 and 5.  Then I put another screw in that held all those  together, a very long thin screw. Then I glued 4, 3 and 10. Because if I glued 1 and 2 I wouldn't be able to get 11 and 12 in place. I then glued 2 then 11 and 12. Finishing with 1.

South West Showcase Sculpture (un-named)

Once I had this all together I then had to drill all the holes for the stainless steel rod. I measured from the top because that's where the right angle was. The top was square with the curve so I measured down 61mm marked them all. I pre bent the rod by hand using a curve template drawn on the original piece of brown paper, also I didn't use any heat on the rod as that colours it.
Laid the rod on top the wooden spines, with a set square intersected the line that I'd drawn in the middle, this gave me two lines the width of the steel, this I measured in half.  The holes where not at right angles so the drill had to be held at an angle, I eye balled this. The drill piece was smaller than the hole needed. Using a dremel I elongated the holes to fit. then having all the spines marked I shuffled them all onto the rod, placing them all back into their rightful spot. Some I had to fettle a little to make a tight fit.

When it all fitted together I was relieved.

South West Showcase Sculpture (un-named)

I started laying the spines onto the drawing having to hold in place using blocks.  I wanted the white Wandoo to be the meeting point in the sculpture, having to taper the edge, by using tungsten carbide round burrs and a small barrel sander. 

South West Showcase Sculpture (un-named)

I chose to make the middle veneer from Wandoo for two reasons: one, I wanted a contrast timber to give the piece more focus and two, Wandoo is rarely used and certainly not in this context.  I had concerns with using Wandoo as it is extremely dense, tough, hard and was unsure if I could bend around such a tight curve. It surprised me. 

South West Showcase Sculpture (un-named)

Once out of the vacuum I squared off one face which would have worked out OK if I could have squared off the right face. BUT I couldn't do that, because of the way I'd drawn the sculpture was the wrong way around. If that makes sense. So I had the face I wanted to square up, up and not down........then had to make a jig to put over the jointer. 

I did some initial carving and in hindsight I may not have needed to do as much, having more room to move later with this piece would have made life easier. 

As you can see some delimitation which didn't concern me as these areas where to be carved away.

South West Showcase Sculpture (un-named)

For the veneers I used 4 x 1.2 mm thick Jarrah with a 1 x 1.2mm thick  of Wandoo in the centre, there being 5 veneers per spine  by 12 spines at varying lengths from 400mm to 1.8m. I used epoxy glue for these veneers especially  on the tight curves. There was certainly some challenges with this piece. I had to get the veneers pre-bent by bending them around 1/4" pipe making sure they were all at right angles.

South West Showcase Sculpture (un-named)

The formers finished ready for the veneers.
Tension straps where attached to put pressure around the curve and also I needed to protect the veneer from marking. I made a pine chock to slip underneath the end of tension strap. Not sure that worked well as it gave me a point of low pressure once in the vacuum bag and consequently a small point where the veneers did not come together as would have liked.

South West Showcase Sculpture (un-named)

I made the templates out of mdf and then refined them, making sure the curves where exactly how I wanted them. These were the template for the formers. I made sure that when I fettled the very tight curve  it was at right angles to the rest. When I made all the formers I had to make sure that everything was correct, that everything was at right angles so that when I  went to put them all together because I couldn't see the bottom of the sculpture, if they weren't  all right I would have big gaps. This wouldn't then have come together properly

South West Showcase Sculpture (un - named)

The initial idea was for a hall table design. My lecturer at The Australian School of Wood in Dwellingup was quite taken with the design because it was very unusual. I thought about using the design as a free standing form, which has changed to make more sculptural. This is not suppose to be a functional piece it's a piece of art. 

I incorporated stainless steel to expand on not just wood oriented, I like to introduce other elements. By shaping this stainless steel rod it certainly has given definition to this sculptural piece. I was going to use another piece of stainless steel in close to help hold the whole piece together but when my lecturer suggested I try and get all the spines to meet together in the centre, I thought this would be a better option.

I started by drawing a full scale drawing of the sculpture, using a french curve template to make sure the curve was how I wanted them. As there is 12 veins and they will meet at the one centre point these needed to be perfect.

Coffee Table

Legs and base before slab top was attached

Coffee Table - legs

Showing leg connection 

Coffee Table - legs

After much discussion with Neil Erasmus we decided to give the coffee table strength and allow movement I would have to place a tapered piece of MDF painted black underneath the table top. This I attached using stainless steel screws. The legs would be attached using 5/16th, 1" 1/4 stainless steel bolts.

Coffee Table - top

One slab of Yorkgum measuring 1400mm L x 650mm W x 26mm D. This slab was cut from around Willaims in Western Australia.