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I am
a chemical engineer by training and retired from environmental consultancy
in 2005 to focus on woodturning. I live in Oxford with my wife Katherine,
who is a garden
designer and painter,
enlivened by occasional visits from
Jonathan and Joanna. |
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I inherited a lathe in 1999 and had a few lessons, if only for
safety reasons. My original intention was to concentrate on making furniture and
use the lathe for a few chair legs, finials etc. However, very soon I caught the bug
and the priority has shifted right round - lots of turning plus the occasional piece of
furniture. |
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I make functional pieces such as salad bowls and fruit dishes, as well as purely
art forms, but all with a
sense of design and quality. Each piece is different, unless it is one
of a pair of candlesticks or a set of bowls! As I
don't like wasting wood, I also make bottle stoppers (very useful if,
like us, you can't manage a whole bottle of wine at one go).
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I use both English native woods, with
a particular fondness for sycamore with its huge variations in figure
and beauty (but not oak to which I am allergic), and imported ones,
particularly purpleheart, which comes from South America and the Australian
burrs, such as jarrah and the eucalyptuses. I usually work from
dried timber, all the suppliers I use (see Links)
guarantee that their wood comes from properly managed forests.
Occasionally I work from logs - much to the chagrin of Katherine who
sees them piling up in her garden. |
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I became a Registered Professional
Turner in 2007. I also belong to the Oxfordshire Craft Guild,
the Association of Woodturners of Great Britain and the Oxfordshire
Woodturners Club. See Affiliations
for more details. |
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For the technically minded, after two years I swapped the original lathe, an Elu
DB 180, for an Axminster M900. I now use a
Wivamac lathe and a Versachuck. I try not to buy too many things that I see
demonstrated and restrict myself to about a dozen gouges etc, plus a few home made ones. |
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