This year's Symposium had a great lineup of Demonstrators. Some of the Demonstrators included Mike Mahoney, Stuart Batty, Clay Foster, Molly Winton, Pete Holtus, Lee Carter, Steve Gotchall and Phil Lackey. The Event lasted 2 days, September 13th and 14th with a Dinner/Banquet and Auction Saturday evening.
One of the great features of this years Symposium was the Hands on Room was not only open to everyone, but it had a project going on during each of the rotations. This allowed participants to try and usually complete a project during a rotation that they were able to leave with. Some of the projects were Turning Talc, making Spurtles and Spatulas, Globes for Christmas Ornaments, Tops, and a Slim line pen. I thought this was a great idea and really gave everyone who wanted the opportunity to try their hand at turning during this 2 day event.
For the First rotation I chose to watch Molly Winton's "JMaking and use of home-made brands and Commercial Pyrography Pens" I ended up with the best seat in the house as we needed a camera operator for the room. Molly gave a great demo on how she designs the various wood burning tips, uses them and make custom handles for them as well. She also discussed the commerical brand burners and hand pieces avaible for wood turning
Here Molly is starting off, showing the woodburner she uses for demo's as well as her kit for woodburning.
She also brought several of her outstanding pieces along to show as examples of the various styles and designs she uses on her turnings.
For the Next Rotation, I sat in on a local instructor's demo - Doug Schneiter. Doug does alot of hollw form's that have natural voids in them and walked through the steps of doing so for his rotation. Below is him roughing out the piece on a Jet mini.
A close up shot after he had formed and hollowed the piece, still on the lathe.
The third rotation I watched was by Phil Lackey on adding interest to a piece. He explained his influences of bird carving and decorating and that flow into his turnings. During the demo he laid out a spiral pattern on a hollow form and showed how he did the piercing design. He discussed how he tries to vary where and how he's piercing to ensure variety and why he settled on the style of carver he did. Below are some of the pieces he brought to show.
The final rotation of the day I got to sit in on a demo by Clay Foster. I've been in awe of Clay's design, flow and creativity in his woodturning so I was very excited at the opportunity to get to see his demonstration. For this demonstration he showed and explained how he uses egg shells, printers ink or mud and map gas for creating different sytles or patterns in his work.
Below Clay is holding one of his turnins that he covered with egg shells to give it what I'd call a ceramic look. Behind him is the map he used to point out Crum, Texas, where he's from.
Here he's showing how he lays out a pattern in mud, then uses the torch to burn in the design
and the mud protects and then falls off of the form.
Applying the mud
The end result.
Sunday Morning, Molly and Clay did a critique of many of the pieces in the instant gallery. Below they discuss the design and flow of a Bruce Perry turning.
And for the Last demo I managed to catch the rotation with Mike Mahoney showing the Mcnaughton coring techniques. He discussed the value of this system, especially for him as it enables him to get the most wood usage from a single, very expensive, piece of wood.
And for the Final Closing words, our organizers - Allen Jensen and Trent Bosch.
(Posted on 11/19)
