Posted on by Alec Mutch

Report on our meeting 18-08-2022, Team Turning by Nick Simpson.

Our meeting this week on Thursday 18th August 2022 was organized by Nick Simpson, Nick’s plan was to have 3 teams of 3 members working from a 2D plan into a 3D turned item, the specific brief from Nick was to make an Egg, an Egg Cup and a Shallow plate.

Nick wanted each team to come up with a drawing of their project, this could be from one source or from different sources, it was decided to make things equal that a single drawing would be used for all 3 teams to work from, it was also agreed that all 3 teams would get the same 3 blanks and use the same 3 lathes, it was not a race but it was to see if any or all of the teams could finish within the time allocated.

The teams would be made up from one novice, one intermediate turner and one experienced turner, the experienced turner would be tasked to get the other 2 turners for their team. One final quirk that Nick threw in was to have a time limit of 15 minutes for each turner to be working the lathe, then they had to let the next turner take over, this would be repeated throughout the whole meeting, the time keeping was handled by Peter Lawrence.

This was the drawing that Errol Levings produced.

We were all going to be working from this one drawing. David Ross took all the pictures that follow, we hope this will give you an insight as to how the event went.

On lathe 5 we have Alec Mutch, Bob Chisholm and Alan Smith, we decided to do the plate first as it would take the longest to do.
Still working on the plate, but now starting to work on the Egg Cup.
Making head way on the Egg Cup although we did have some catches and a couple of pull outs.
I was tasked with finishing off the Egg Cup in the last 15 minutes, however picture 16 shows that we were unable to complete the 3rd item the Egg within the allocated time.
On lathe 2 we have David Hobson, Dave Line and Ernie Gibson, they started on the Egg first.
In this picture all 3 turners can be seen working on the Egg Cup.
With the Egg Cup reversed the team take on the task of hollowing out the Egg Cup.
Picture 29 finishes off the Egg Cup, the team then tackle the Shallow Plate.
On lathe 3 we have Errol Levings, Alan Ross and Susan Drew, they decided to work on the Egg first.
Picture 37 shows their Egg almost finished, they then moved on to making the Egg Cup.
Pictures 41 & 42 show their Egg cup being finished, before moving on to making the Shallow plate, they too had a couple of problems.
Here the whole team can be seen working on the Shallow plate, Errol was tasked with doing the last 15minutes and almost finished their project.

The time was up and it ended the team turning, Nick gathered up all the pieces from each team for display and a general discussion took place on the items and the proceedings, it was felt by all 3 teams that the time scale we had could have done with being a bit longer, Nick acknowledged that the time allocated was a bit ambitious, but it was felt by all the rest of the members that the event went very well and that it was interesting and with an element of fun thrown in. Although there were no placings awarded it was felt that David Hobson’s team got the closest to the brief and the drawing. It was also suggested that this would be repeated in the future all be it with possibly different items being made.

Our next meeting is on the 1st September, it’s being managed by David Hobson and David’s theme for the meeting is going to be making wooden fruits, David has already arranged for all 5 lathes to be working.