All content © West Suffolk Woodturning Club 2012 - 2018
We are a small and friendly club which has a variety of members with very varied skills. Many of our members travel considerable distances to meet with us and most are very active turners.
We promote our club and woodturning at various events during the year.
Members can offer advice and tips and you can learn a lot from our demonstration evening, which showcase some of the top demonstrators available as well as our own members’ talents. We use a media projector to make sure that the action is viewed from several camera angles.
There is always a table for display of your latest creation at each meeting, also the occasional item turns up for sale. As part of your membership we can offer you a free personal gallery page on this website.
We also have a number of nights where traders may show their wares and demonstrate their products.
We hold a club competition annually where we award the Club’s “Malcolm Fox Memorial Trophy” to the entry voted most popular by the members.
See the calendar page for all this years events.
About our club
Quick Links
Upcoming meetings and events:
July 17th - Demonstration with Tom Kittle
7:30pm at the Village Hall
August - No meeting
Recently displayed
2017 Malcolm Fox Memorial Trophy being presented to winner, Peter Thurston, by Chairman, Tic Challis
Click for full report
We encourage all members to bring items to meetings for display. See more in the main Gallery
May 2018 - Darren Breeze
By way of introduction, Darren gave a very open account of his chequered past and how it led him into woodturning and to opening his own shop to sell his work.
Darren’s first demonstration was his ‘Flame Bowl’. The was turned and hollowed before the evening, he use a Proxon Hand held 2” chain saw to carve followed by scorching and then colouring using mouth blown spirit stains. Finally the ‘flames’ were cut out using a mini jigsaw.
April - Multiturn evening
Although headlined as ‘Multiturn’ these evenings include decorating and other techniques alongside traditional woodturning.
Seven members provided the entertainment for the evening. Judging from the number of conversations taking place between the demonstrators and onlookers a lot of information was passed in both directions. See the full report here
A-Z Safety
Darren’s second demonstration was a coloured and textured bowl.
The wood was Beech, he turned the bowl then created beads using a small beading tool to create beads. This was followed by the delineation of areas he was to texture using a large Sorby Texturing Wheel. Again the piece as coloured using mouth diffusers to spray the spirit stain, blending one into the other.
Finally the textured areas where highlighted using ‘gold’ gilt cream, finally buffing with Woodwax 22 from Chestnut products. This produced a very effective finish.
March - Colin Smith
Colin demonstrated how to make an off centre bowl which can be fitted with a
finial lid.
The African wood called "Beli" which has a similar grain pattern to Zebrano, light and dark stripes.
Colin’s second project of the evening was a goblet made from an Apple Branch. He turned the bowl of the goblet off-centre which made for a fun item. An interesting and enjoyable evening.
February - John French
John gave a very informative talk about the different adhesives available, their development timeline and their best applications.
A very useful talk in which John also expalined the reasons for glue failure and the different forces that can cause this.
John’s second item introduced the use of Epoxy resins and how they can be used to add decoration to woodturning projects.
He talked about the Milliput range, how to uses it and showed examples of decorated pots. A very useful and interesting informative evening.
June 2018 - Carlyn Lindsay
This was not the first time Carlyn has visited the club and each time she has enthralled us with the precision and originality of her craft.
This time was no exception as Lindsay demonstrated making a quite delicate little lidded bowl using her veneer laminating technique.
She alternated 3 black veneers with two natural ones and sandwiched them between planed blocks using PVA to glue them all together. She then sliced the block at right angles to the veneer and adds more veneer in between the cut surfaces and ends with a chequered effect.
Depending on the curve the resulting ‘lines’ of veneer add a lovely patterning to the item, however precision is required to align the initial blank and know when to stop cutting to allow for a balanced pattern.
