Attended by 170 guests, delegates and turners, Axminster Tool Centre hosted the Strictly Woodturning event. Similar to the BBC’s popular Strictly Come Dancing, this was a competition in which the 12 turners competed against each other at the lathe and were tasked with producing items such as a vase, goblet and lidded box in an incredibly short eight minutes.
Woodturning
History of the Lathe: part one – reciprocal motion
All lathes by their very nature rely on a revolving work piece. To capture and impart this motion, to devise and create the required force has challenged mans ingenuity back into pre-history. Man has been using the momentum provided by a spinning weight for tens of thousands of years in the form of drop spindles […]
History of the Lathe: part two – continuous rotation
The wheel is probably man’s most important technological discovery. A Sumarian pictogram dated 3500BC is the earliest reference for the wheel. By 2000BC man was making spoked wheels yet the earliest pictorial reference we have of a wheel driven lathe seems to be from the 15th century.
History of the Lathe: part three – mechanical power
From classical times man has harnessed wind and water to work heavy machinery, to relieve him of hard physical labour and to speed up production. A Roman settlement C.200AD in southern France boasted sixteen water mills for grinding corn. It may be that this form of motive power was used to drive lathes also but […]
History of the Lathe: part four – the machine takes over
Man has always tried to find ways of making manual tasks easier and the businessman methods to reduce manpower, speed production and lower operating costs. A good illustration of this was the manufacture of rifle butts. Hand held firearms have existed since the Middle Ages and virtually all these weapons incorporated a hand fashioned wooden […]
Bone up on Bobbins : the craft of lace bobbin making
Most lace designs required the use of dozens of bobbins at any one time. This need kept many specialist bobbin turners busy through nearly five centuries.
The International Turning Exchange
There is nothing parochial about the International Turning Exchange (ITE); this is born out by the number of residents who have participated from many parts of the globe over the last ten years. For me an indicator of the programme’s great success was the number of past residents who chose to return to Philadelphia to […]
How I built Leonardo Da Vinci’s lathe
A simple sketch by the Italian genius Leonardo Da Vinci C.1480 gives us our first glimpse of what an early treadle wheel lathe might have looked like.
Chair Turnings
Woodturning has played more than a supporting role in the history of chair making. From the ancient Egyptians, who used the lathe for turning chair parts, to the latest computer-controlled copy lathes man has endeavored to decorate his furniture and solve the practical turning problems that arise. Some of the earliest evidence of turned work […]
