March - San Diego Woodturners

San Diego Woodturners Page 17 March 2011
Desert Roundup Seminar Reviews
by Mavis Porter
Lyle Jamieson
The basic bowl seminar, which was not that basic because Lyle chose a piece of olive from the crotch of
the tree; it was triangular and selected for its probable good grain.
When he mounted the wood, he used a laser from behind the
headstock to make sure the wood was evenly distributed given
its strange shape. Lyle also emphasized balancing the wood and
tightening the tail stock hard enough so that the wood could not be
moved by hand before turning on the lathe. His other emphatic lesson
was to search out your face plate and do not use the chuck: the
chuck will introduce some wobble. The face plate must have holes
added to it, and the wood must be attached with size 12 x 1 ¼ sheet
metal screws, an impact driver should be used to tighten the screws.
The face plate has to be seated on the tail stock with no padding or
anything else that could introduce wobble. Lyle said he did not know he had so many rules. If you want more
go to www.jamison.com . I also took his hollowing classes which were interesting but mainly emphasized his
patented laser system for knowing how thick the wood is, it works well but I am not sure it is any better than
many of the other systems.
Christian Burchard
How to make balls, or as he prefers, spheres. Like Jaimeson, Buchard eschews the use of a chuck, and prefers
to glue wood onto a block attached to a face plate. He turns the balls by using three perpendicular lines
as guides. I believe he always uses wet wood and very often it is madrone burl, which is plentiful in South
Oregon where he lives. He uses many unconventional methods including drying wood in a microwave, and
putting the balls in a very hot oven to dry before the final turning. He also decorates the balls with various
lines and will move the ball on the face plate by loosening a couple of screws and wedging in underneath to
make asymmetrical patterns. Burchard also makes thin beautiful bowls which are allowed to distort while
drying and are then sand blasted and finished. I took his seminar on design and he showed some very “way
out” designs: in many of these the work on the lathe has to be a very small portion of the total work. I recommend
looking at his web site because I failed to get any good pictures. www.burchardstudio.com He did
recommend a book “Understanding Wood” by Taunton Press.
Mark Sfirri
Off center turning, having taken the class I remain almost as confused, and think the only way to get my head
around it is to play with it. Sriffi makes elongated
bodies, which remind me of those done
by Alberto Giacometti, as well as shapes that
make it very hard to understand how they could
have been turned. I have not found his web site
but his work is readily found by googling his
name. He provided us with a schematic for
making multi-axis candlesticks and a couple of
other projects; I would be happy to fax these
to you or make copies. Mark recommended a
book called “Anatomy for the Artist” unfortunately
there are two books with that title.