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Guy Ravine RPT
Weird and wonderful.
March 16th 2005
Reviewed by John Stinson (photos Gregory Moreton)
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With a title of Weird and Wonderful I wasn’t quite sure what to
expect as Guy Ravine started setting up his demonstration during the
March club evening. To be honest, I was fairly sceptical that I’d see
anything new, having already watched a number of weird and wonderful
demonstrations over the past two years with the club. How wrong I was!
Guy covered six techniques that I’d not seen before and certainly
haven’t tried myself. He started by showing us how to decorate spinning
tops using chatterwork. He demonstrated how to turn bone, aluminium and
imitation tortoiseshell, finishing off the evening with thread chasing
and eccentric turning.
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Guy has been a professional turner since 1979, so what tips has he
picked up over that time? Here are a few he passed on:
1: When making lace bobbins from aluminium, be sure to cover them
with lacquer rather than metal polish. This helps keep the lace clean.
2: On long production runs of items like eccentric turned pears,
stick with a nice easy wood. Don’t let the client persuade you to use a
difficult wood like laburnum.…
3: When boiling cow’s shin bones to prepare them for turning, be
careful where you deposit the residue!
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Guy mentioned that for the first half of his career he’d been able to
make a reasonable living from production turning. Over the past five to
ten years, however, demand for turned work has dropped off and he now
finds it impossible to make a living out of turning alone. On the one
hand, it seems a shame, that someone with his immense experience and
talent is not able to make money from his trade.
On the other hand, however, as one of his main sources of income is now
demonstrations, it does mean that we get to learn from him. Hopefully
he managed to inspire us to try outsome of his weird and wonderful
techniques for ourselves.
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