Wood-turning workshop

There is a ‘creative entrepreneur hub’ in the city, not far from where we live. It’s located in one of the old industrial buildings, which are all being repurposed, so the workshops tend to move around a bit. Big machinery gets shared, which makes it possible for smaller workshops to take on bigger projects they would otherwise could not.

Some of these workshops presented themselves on a “Maker’s Market” some time ago, and one of those was Suzan Doornbos, who makes objects from turned wood. This was something we had been curious about (there’s a shop in Arnhem that has all kinds of woodworking stuff, and we had been peeking through their windows at several occasions) and when I saw that she offered workshops, I took one of her cards to check it out.

So yesterday we went to her workshop to learn the basics of turning wood. There were three ‘students’: me, klik, and someone who had been making furniture for some time and who wanted to expand her repertoire.

(Also, I like the Dutch word ‘draaibank’ much better than the English ‘lathe’. ‘Draaibank’ literally means ‘turning bench’, which is so much more descriptive.)

We started off with a rectangular block of wood. Determine the center and then clamp it into the lathe.

An overview of the ‘turning station’ I used. When rotating the block by hand, in order to see that it would not bump into the ‘tool shelf’, I noticed that the rotation speed (the four-number display on the left) was measured independently from the motor input — it counted the rotations I did by hand. That makes a lot of sense, as you don’t have to calibrate motor input so carefully.

Safety first! I look so fashionable in this…

Using a very coarse chisel, we chipped off the square edges to make the block round. Hard work, but once you got the feeling it wasn’t so bad.

Still a bit uneven, but we’d use a much smaller chisel with much finer control to fix that. And really, you only can get fine details in once the block is rounded. The trick is to let the chisel glide across the wood, and you can’t do that if it’s not rounded off!

Action shot.

With a much finer chisel, we made the block much smoother and more even. I had one little spot that still was straight. That was pointed out repeatedly, but I thought it would be cool to have one spot that reminded you that it all started out as a rectangular block of wood. (Spoiler: when finishing up the piece, I had to turn quite a bit of wood from that spot and I think it’s now completely gone. Too bad!)

Then we learned how to make a deep cut. Not too deep, of course, otherwise you’d have two pieces instead of one… We used pencil lines as guides.

And another cut made! The cuts can’t be straight down, because then the chisel gets too much friction from the sides of the ‘groove’ it is cutting, so you have to make smaller cuts next to it to give it room to go deeper.

Then we learned how to ’round off’ one side. The movement is kinda tricky, so this first side is kinda straight. And once the wood has come off, you can’t add it back!

The other side went much better! And it was not just me, everyone’s second side was better. Still, amazing how fast you can learn something like this. The cuts to the left and right are still rough, but of course I’d finish that up later with a much smaller chisel.

Working very concentrated on getting the round shape right…

Then we learned how to make a ‘hollow’. This was much harder, and my chisel ran away a few times. That left deep grooves on other parts of the block, so I had to carefully turn those away again, to make it smooth again. You can see that the cut below the round part has been smoothed out too.

All the heavy lifting has now been done. The piece is still a bit rough around the edges, so I took a very fine chisel to finish it up.

The end result: this is as good as I was going to get it. Next was the sanding, with grit 180, 240 and 320 respectively. After the sanding it was really nice and smooth!

This is how our work came out of the lathe. Because there is always a bit of wood where the center-points go in, the ends are never smooth — so these candle holders are still wobbly! That would be fixed with a drill though. And there would also be a metal bit inserted at the top to hold the candle, so that the wood would not burn if the candle burned down too low! My work is on the left: I decided I wanted the round part on top. Klik’s work is on the right, and she wanted the hollow part on top.

This is the finished work of all the workshop participants. Mine on the left, Klik’s in the middle. The other participant had shaved her piece too far down to have the metal candle holder drilled all the way into the piece, as it was wider than the narrow part on top of her rounded part, so the metal bit sticks out.

It was a lot of fun, and I am amazed at how quickly you can learn the basics! Suzan also offers a second workshop to learn how to turn a wooden box, and that might be something for the future…

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.

Texel vacation

A few weeks ago, we took our (now traditional) Texel vacation. We had booked a bit earlier in the season (in hopes of getting better/good weather) and we had a bigger chalet than previous years — mostly because my mother-in-law (who insists to pay for it) wanted to have a bigger shower. She and my sister-in-law go one week before us, so they stay there two weeks and we join them for the last week.

The ferry service to Texel has two boats. It takes about 20 minutes to cross, and with 5 minutes loading and unloading, they can manage to make a full round-trip every hour. So on busy days, when they use both, there is a ship leaving either end every 30 minutes. However, the largest of the two had engine trouble, so it was not in service — which meant a vastly reduced capacity, on one of the busiest days. Which meant it took us about four hours to get to the other side.



We tried to keep our spirits up, but that got harder as it took longer and longer. We were so, so tired when we arrived — luckily our beds had already been made and dinner was ready for us!

Things did not go well for long, as my sister-in-law tested positive for COVID-19. She was coughing a lot, but did not suffer a lot of other symptoms, which was lucky. But it did restrict our activities a bit. We compensated by getting take-out from a few restaurants, and we decided we actually kinda liked it: good food and it’s more relaxed than sitting in a restaurant the whole evening. (We kept doing self-tests all through the week, but all of ours came up negative, too.)

Ever since we went to Texel, we tried to get a ride on a horse-drawn carriage that would go to the Slufter, a nature preserve where the sea is allowed to come through a gap in the dunes, creating tidal flats. But we never got around it: either it was full, or it was raining too hard, or there were too few participants… But this year we managed (though my sister-in-law could not join us…)



We went to the designated bus stop and there it was!



We were seated towards the front of the carriage. Klik and her mother were on the second bench from the front, I was right behind them. It was kinda rainy and windy, so the plastic covers had been zipped up. That limited the view to the side, so it was good we could look out the front. The driver talked a lot and pointed out all kinds of interesting stuff along the way, which was very entertaining.



The route took us to the Slufter, and because the tide had been especially high, the horses had to draw the carriage partially through the water. At the edge of the beach, the carriage was parked and we got tea and coffee. We were free to look around and stretch our legs for a bit, but of course we couldn’t do any serious exploring.



Those Belgian draft horses are big. On the left is Nel, who is a bit younger and who needed a bit of careful coaching from the driver to keep up the work! On the right is Lies, who is more experienced and who dragged Nel with her at times — which annoyed her a bit. “Lies” and “Nel” are quite old-fashioned Dutch women’s names, I like that.



Apparently the stable has a side-business making some kind of flavoured rum, and of course they gave people a taste and made sure to tell them where they could get it…



Apart from all of the troubles, it was once again a good vacation. We’ve already made the reservations for next year.

On the Friday we would leave, the second ship wasn’t running either, so we left at the moment the camping gates opened — very early, but we didn’t want to take any chances. We got on the boat right away, so that went well. This also meant we were home a lot earlier than we would usually be, but that was not a problem at all: we could get our kitties from their ‘hotel’ one day earlier!

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.