Gregory Moreton RPT

Monkeying around

November 15th 2006

Reviewed by Brian Ash

Starting the bowl inside

Greg had intended demonstrating the turning of a large blank of Monkey Puzzle tree on his own lathe, however with power problems at the venue he had to revert to turning a piece of wet Silver Birch on the club Axminster lathe.

He did explain initially how he would have turned the very large blank of Monkey Puzzle and the difficulties encountered with this unusual but very attractive wood.

The Silver Birch, about 12” long and 5” diameter, was mounted between centres and the outside turned round except for about 2” one end which was left with the bark on for a natural edge vase. The opposite edge was turned to a chuck recess.

The wood was then remounted on the chuck and the outside was further turned. Using a bowl gouge and still with the tail stock supporting the blank Greg started to turn the inside leaving the natural edge. Greg explained that he had sharpened the bowl gouge and he lightly rounded the end of the bevel to give a smooth path on the gouge when hollowing the inside of the vase.

After the tail stock was removed he continued to turn the bowl part of the vase, taking care to preserve the natural edge end and aiming for about 1/8” even thickness. This could be judged by shining the light in the inside of the vase (as shown in the picture). During this process he lightly sprayed the wood with orange oil to keep it wet during the turning.

Finally he turned the stem of the vase and parted it from the base.


*Starting the chuck recess*		*Forming the chuck recess*

*Hollowing - with tail stock support*		*Forming the stem - with light showing bowl thickness*