Our meeting this week was organized by Alan Smith, Alan had the dubious privilege of having to organize the yearly Pub Style Quiz, this he did with an enthusiasm that was difficult to match, he created a set of questions that really set the cat amongst the pigeons, in other words I think Alan was the winner in this quiz.
The turnout for the quiz was a little disappointing we only had 4 tables with his questions. His first set of questions was a real test of identification, Alan had cut 42 small pieces of wood almost all were native woods with some others that were not native but were grown in this country, none of them were duplicates. All 4 tables did really badly in this part of the quiz, there were 1 point for a correct answer and a half point for any question that was partly right, the average points scored from this section was only 10 out of a possible 42. I think you would agree Alan was the winner here.
He had a further 3 sheets of questions that were more to do with the lathe, the tools and things that included the word wood in their title. On this part all 4 tables faired a little better, there were 26 questions in this section and the best that was received was by tables 1 and 2 where their respective totals for all the questions came to 27, we had a tie, Alan had catered for this event and came up with a couple of tie break questions, the first of which none of the 2 tables got it right, so it was onto the 2nd question, that question was “What was the Hoover Dam formally called” the answer was the “Boulder Dam” and that answer came from table one by Geoff Potter.
That ended the quiz, it was very well received by everyone who took part and Alan was given a big round of applause for all his efforts in making up the questions. It was not taken too seriously but was taken with a good sense of humour and will be repeated next year. Thanks to all who took part.
I didn’t get any pictures from this meeting so here are a couple of pictures of items I had made, some quite a long time ago and some just this week.
Left, whilst I was in business as the Ullapool Woodturning Centre I made several of these rocking chairs, a good item to do for repeat turnings and also for your woodwork in general. Right, a set of Natural Edged Bowls, 1, Ash, 2, Elm, 3, Sycamore, 4, Spalted Beech, 5, Birch, 6, Laburnum.
A set of 5 Elm Burr bowls I made this week and they were on show at the club this week.
How’s this for a piece of interesting grain, this is an ELM bowl that had a branch growing out from it, it was turned mainly as end grain. I made this on Friday 7th June.
Here is a 3 basin bowl made from Birch, the picture on the left is as viewed from the top, the picture on the right is as viewed from the underside, the little dark dots are the mounting points for each of the basins, that should allow you to see just how much offset there was in the making of this piece.
Our next meeting is on the 20th June, it’s being organized by John Ruickbie, John has arranged for 4 more turners to man the lathes, all will be making shallow plates that we hope to sell on our open day in the 10th August.
We are still looking for more items to be made that can be sold at the open day to raise funds for the Defibrillator, do try to make something and give your donation to David Hobson, or if you don’t wish to make something a cash donation can be made to Alan Geddes. Thank you.