We had an excellent workshop at our usual venue in Togher today with several new faces who we hope will become members of our chapter and become regular attenders. Our chairman, John Ahern, gave an excellent demonstration with great skill and expertise. He first-of-all made a couple of "fruit" pieces - an apple and a lemon - from yew and finished them with great attention to detail. I thought using a real clove to finish the side opposite the stem of the apple was quite ingenious and very real looking.
For the second part of his demonstration John concentrated on finishing and gave some excellent pointers. He had several different finishing products and gave us the pros and cons for each. He also concentrated on the most important part of woodturning and that is keeping an edge on the tools. John brought in a Sorby Pro-Edge and gave a short demonstration on its use.
There was something learned by everybody today, including by John himself who graciously took some excellent advice from one of the members, John Hourihan, and was glad to do so.
The competition this month was a baby's rattler. The entry was disappointingly small with only ten items across the three categories.
Just look at the concentration on that man's face.
Some of the attendance.
Very realistic fruit pieces made by John Ahern.
The competition entries. "Beginners" at the bottom, "Intermediate" above that and "Advanced" at the top.
Winners of the "Advanced" section; Peter Manning, John Ahern (1st place) and Paddy O'Rourke.
Winners of the "Intermediate" section; Jim O'Donovan, P.J. O'Brien (1st place) and Michael Pattwell
Joe Kennedy, Winner of the "Beginners" section with a piece that could have taken its place in either of the other sections.
