Club demo: 17 Sept 2025
Report by: Kevin McFall
Glenn’s demo was an interesting take on producing flowers of varying types as art pieces. Also this is a great way to practice and improve your spindle gouge and skew work.
Flowers
Glenn started out with a cylinder of wood mounted into a chuck. This was hollowed out leaving a centre piece to be made into the stamen. After this initial hollowing for the face of the flower a skew was used to “peel” back the centre “stamen” in small shaves at a time being careful to not remove them but to leave then attached to give the rough ‘feathered” look of the inside of the flower.
Now the back side of the flower is turned. Accuracy is required to keep the petal thin and leaving the base thick enough to either turn or attach a stalk / branch to the flower.
Once this flower was paired off, then produced another using the same technique but turned down about 100mm from behind the flower to produce one on a longer stalk.
Next Glenn put a larger piece of wood between two spindles. This was turned to 150mm diameter (approx.) with a 50mm tenon machined onto one end. This was then placed into a chuck. As before a concave front of as flower was machined with a centre left that was then peeled back in layers with a skew to produce the stamen. Now the back was turned but made thicker this time to allow the front to be textured with a carving tool. This allowed the flower to be made to look like the petals were overlapping and had texture on the surface (colour could also be added at this stage if desired).
Using the same techniques Glenn then rapidly produce another 3 or four flowers.
When getting ready to carve the flowers, initially draw with a pencil the shapes desired. Then either carve completely or make initial saw cuts to separate the beginning of the petals. Then Glenn carved the petals with grooves at the outlines with a slight undercut to make them look like the overlapped. The outside gape can then also be shaped with the carver to make the outside shape of the petals.
This was a great demo from Glen and showed a creative way of making flowers that could be used to decorate any room with style.
