April Meeting: Turning for Furniture Makers

The highlight of the April CJWA meeting was an excellent presentation by Tom Jones, president of the Atlantic Shore Woodturners woodturning club on how woodturning can be used for furniture projects. Tom was kind enough to bring his own lathe for this demonstration and was able to show a number of spindle turning techniques that could be used for furniture projects. Tom demonstrated the use of roughing gouges, spindle gouges, parting tools, and skew chisels to turn all the shapes and forms that can be used for furniture parts.

Tom had some good tips for turning for furniture projects.  He likes using a Sorby Stebcentre instead of a standard 4 prong drive center, as he thinks the Stebcentre gives more control over the holding of the workpiece. He said that spindle turning often will use higher speeds on the lathe compared to bowl turners, often in the 1800 rpm range. Good woods for turning tend to be harder, and fruit woods are very good for this purpose.

Here Tom shows how to use a caliper and parting tool to establish a specific measured diameter on a spindle piece.

And this is what not to do.