Things to Hang on a Christmas Tree – Graeme Mackay

Club Meeting: 24 October 2018
Report by: Bill Alden

Graham showed us his home-made sanding blocks from the various foam offcuts of different sizes, to which he had glued Velcro and used fabric backed sanding pieces

First Piece

Offcut blocks are used for this project and don’t need to be exactly square. Mark centres using diagonal lines and use a bradawl to indent the centre. Graham used steb centres. He also explained all the usual setup and safety points and spin the work before switching on the lathe.

Rough to a round and then use a small bowl gouge to work on the shapes. This first piece was a simple shape with gentle curves top and bottom the lower finial being left slightly longer than the upper finial. Before finishing the top a small hole possibly 3 mm as Graham was not specific on this (about that size) was drilled at the top to allow for a string to hang the ornament. Final finishing and parting off produced the first piece.

Second Piece

This was again marked out and roughed out this time using a 13 mm bowl gouge and using a spindle gouge to form the new shape which this time had two wings Graeme also talked about colour using felt pens and these need to be applied to the spinning work of course after final sanding and finishing.

Third piece

Graeme use different tools to finish this one and was roughing out partially with the skew chisel the design of this one was a little more complicated and three sections were marked out with Long point of skew and which were then shaped with a small skew and a spindle gouge.