Welcome to the turning page. I have a few new projects in the works. Well actually more in my head than in the works but it's a start. I created a black walnut serving dish for the holidays and there are photos in the February newsletter. |
A Little HistoryWoodturning goes back a few years: in the good old days, there was much art and much less speed than we get today. Old spindle and bowl lathes used various sources of power, but often had low end speeds of 75 RPM--and high end speed of 75 RPM! There were treadle models and pedal models--with pedals designed to work as they did on the velocipedes of the time (late 1870s in the cases mentioned…recent research indicates that woodturning may be about 3000 years old, originating, presumably simultaneously, in Great Britain [Celts], Italy [Etruscans] and by inhabitants of the Crimea).Today, we have to look hard to find low speeds that slow, and higher speeds can range up to those that will toss even the smallest work right off the chuck if it is not securely fastened. Part of the art, and skill, of woodturning is learning the techniques that keep you safe. Woodturning is being discovered by many more people each year, and quickly shows itself deserving of a reputation as an art, though sometimes a simple one, in addition to being known as a complex and satisfying craft. Given enough skill from the woodworker, turned wood objects do not have to be simple, in any way. Art is at least partly in the eye of the beholder, so whether or not your work is art is up to you and its other viewers. One of the greatest features of turning is the chance to gain enough knowledge in short order to make finished projects in just a few hours--lathes give us the possibility of completing, including finish, many worthwhile projects inside a single evening. We can turn out good looking, useful projects after work on almost any day. Short of driving nails in a plank and then nailing the plank to the wall to hold coats and sweaters, there's nothing much else out there that allows shorter times from start to finish in woodworking projects. And the best part is, the projects are both attractive and useful--or can be! Traditionally, it was thought that the ancient Egyptians introduced lathe turning. Perhaps as much as 4,000 years ago. Despite a lack of hard evidence, it was assumed that a civilization as advanced as Egypt’s—known to develop the potter’s wheel and bow drill—possessed the technical know-how and skill to have made the invention of the lathe inevitable. Instead, scholars now believe that the lathe was invented later, around a thousand years B.C., and that its development may have occurred simultaneously among the Etruscans in Italy, the Celts in Great Britain, and the inhabitants of the Crimea. By the second century B.C., the lathe was known to most of the peoples of the Near East and Europe. One of the reasons that lathe turning of wood was thought to be an older craft was the assumption that it represented only a slight modification of either the bow drill or, more significantly, the potter’s wheel. Although we know that the potter’s wheel was invented more than a millennium before the lathe, there are nonetheless strong affinities between the two crafts that have always had relevance to working craftspeople. Both are based on the working of a piece of material that is shaped while revolving on a fixed point or points. Originally, the lathe was vertically oriented, like the potter’s wheel. With both devices the form of the material can change shape with great speed. Indeed, speed and regularity were the primary advantages that each apparatus offered. With both techniques additional work is necessary to prepare the finished product. The interchangeable use of the terms "thrown" and "turned" to describe turned chairs up until the eighteenth century demonstrates the traditional association of the two crafts; in fact, the words "turner" and "thrower" mean exactly the same thing. One definition of the verb "to throw" offered by the Oxford English Dictionary is "to form or fashion by means of a rotary or twisting motion. To turn (wood, etc.) in a lathe." As Victor Chinnery recently pointed out, the word "turner" is from the Latin, a southern European term, while "thrower" is from Old German and northern Europe. "Throwing a pot" refers not to the physical action of forming clay on the wheel but, rather, to the revolving action of the wheel, as well as the counter-force applied by the craftsman to the spin. Both actions also clearly apply to the woodturning lathe. |
