March 2011 Meeting

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Lynn Southward was kind enough to show us how he turns his spheres.  He also showed us how he displays the spheres using small turned cup feet.  He starts off by rounding a piece of wood (grain parallel to the length of the lathe bed) into a cylinder.  Once he has a cylinder, he uses his calipers to measure the width.  The width then becomes the length of the finished sphere and two marks are made on the cylinder.  A third line is also penciled onto the blank to represent the middle of the sphere.  This third line should not be turned away, otherwise the sphere diameter has been changed.  All of the material beyond the three lines is waste.

Lynn then began to remove the excess material on the ends of the cylinder (beyond the outer two lines).  Once the excess material is no longer in the way, he began to round the corners ever so slightly. 

Lynn then cut the piece free of the tenons and sanded the nubs down.  He then placed it between cup centers (the cup centers should come close to matching your final diameter for best gripping power).  As you see in the picture below, he rotates the piece 90 degrees so that the pencil line now runs parallel to the lathe bed.  If you are careful, you can rotate the piece only three times and have a perfect sphere according to Lynn (though he admits he often has to rotate a few more times to get the shape he wants).  I think you can't argue with his results!!

The pictures below show some of the items brought in for the monthly President's Challenge entries and show-and-tell.  Congratulations to our President's Challenge winner Jim Nickless shown with his beautifully made brick trimmed birdhouse!  We also had a second place winner Lloyd Niederritter.  As always, thanks to all of those that brought in items for show and tell and those that brought in flag bases.  

Our April President's Challenge item is to turn an Easter egg.         

Ted has CA (super) glue and accelerator for sale.  He has 2 oz bottles of thin, medium and thick for $6 each.  He also has black glue for $8 each.

Don't forget about our special challenge of turning wooden flag holders for our veterans at the Ann Arbor VA hospital.  All bases should have a 3/16" hole to accept the flag.