May saw the turning of yet more spindles of varying quality. I think that with hindsight the tools were starting to become fairly blunt which was slowing down my progress. the first piece I produced was more beads. I was starting to become pretty fed up with turning beads by the end of this piece and wanted to produce something more useful. Even so the beads were fairly good.
Even though I was fed up with turning beads I couldn’t get away from them and turned another piece this time with beads and coves. I had moved over to using the small spindle gouge at this point as it was sharper than the large one and easier to control.
My parents came down to visit in mid-may and I couldn’t let them get away without having a play on the lathe. I showed them how to rough down stock which they both enjoyed having a go at and then I showed them the basic cuts I had learnt. Mum was a little apprehensive but Dad took to it like a duck to water and cut a fantastic bead. After they had finished I decided to have a shot myself and roughed down the piece of wood again. The piece below was the result. I was very proud of this piece especially the urn shape which has an undercut top.
I tried to replicate my skill of the previous day with this piece. It just wasn’t up to the same standard though. I think I was trying a little to hard.
My last piece of the month was this odd looking spindle. The tools were fairly blunt by this point so the finish is pretty poor. The shapes just don’t seem to flow into one another either. All in all I am not impressed with this piece.
