Midland Chapter - March to Sept 2025
Midlands Chapter Meeting: March 2025
Our own Paddy O’ Connor was on duty for our March Chapter meeting, showing how it’s done when an egg cup is required ….and an egg to go with it.
The blank was mounted between centres and the tenon turned to fit the chuck, it was shaped to a cylinder and then hollowed on the inside using a spindle gouge (a round nosed scraper can also be used). The shaped was then refined and finished.
Paddy advised that there are many challenges when turning the egg …. cutting downhill and keeping the bevel on the wood, continuous cutting from left to right and right to left, it also gives plenty of spindle work practice for several shapes, spherical, gentle curves and tapered points.
As usual Paddy inspired us with his skill and knowledge.
The ‘’Natural Edge Bowl’’ competition winners were Martin McNamara, Michael Kelly , Lorcan Bermingham and Martin Grehan.
Midlands Chapter Meeting: April 2025
We had a very informative and enjoyable evening at our April Chapter Meeting. Huge thanks to Matthis Cherici who was visiting Ireland from France whilst completing an internship with Emmet Kane at his Castledermot workshop. He gave us an insight into the training requirements for a woodturner in France.
He demonstrated various cutting techniques, straight grain, cross grain using a curved skew and gouge which he had ground with a long sweep which he used with interesting results .
Congratulations to Martin Grehan, Michael Kelly, Lorcan Bermingham and Padraig Tierney. The Egg and Cup competition winners
Midlands Chapter Meeting: May 2025
Something very different for our May Chapter meeting. Martin McNamara demonstrated a technique known as Therming, often described as off-centre spindle turning or drum or barrel turning. It is a woodturning technique dating back to the 1700s, that allows the woodturner to produce multiple sided spindles with each side turned.
Martin used four workpieces held between two discs to form a barrel which was then mounted between centres on the lathe. The exposed face of each piece was then shaped using standard spindle turning. The workpieces were then rotated and the process repeated to shape another face. To minimise the number of fuzzy edges the workpieces can be rotated so that the exit edge becomes the next entry resulting in only the last exit edge being fuzzy . Martin advised that all sanding should be done with the lathe turned off. Martin uses a sanding disc on a drill. The tools used were a parting tool to cut a bowl gouge to shape and a spindle gouge for corner shaping
Martin was heavily influenced by Art Liestman and Margaret Garrard in this method of turning.
The competition winners on the night were Michael Kelly and Lorcan Bermingham, Padraig Tierney and Kieran Leahy.
Midland’s Chapter Open Day: June 2025
The Midlands chapter had a very enjoyable open day in Emmet Kanes workshop. Many thanks to Billy Ferris who had a very busy day demonstrating his work, we were all very impressed by his beautiful ladies …. with hats. In this case the pictures show it all.
Midlands Chapter Meeting: September 2025
William Kenny was our demonstrator on the first night back after our summer break . It was a thoroughly enjoyable and instructive demonstration of an emerging bowl.
An emerging bowl as its name suggests is a piece that creates the illusion of a bowl emerging from a block of wood, William started by turning a half sphere from a piece of 100 x100 mm beech. He suggested that the dimension could also be made up of smaller square pieces glued together. (It is well worth putting the work into getting the sphere shape as close to the desired dimension as possible at this stage to ensure a good bowl shape when hollowed)
The piece was then cut in half and mounted off centre on a friction drive face plate then turned and hollowed.
William runs a very successful U-Tube channel and the detailed process of turning the emerging bowl from beginning to end is well worth a watch.
The second piece William turned was a lovely thin-walled sycamore bowl .
The competition winners were Michael Kelly, Lorcan Bermingham, Padraig Tierney and Paul Lacey.
