   |
| Pen Blanks(Apple) Carving design /Template(Lawrence) Birch Bowl Blank-20% Humidity |
February 3,2026:
The group began a renaissance of the biweekly meeting in mid 2025. The meetings are held from 1 pm to 3 pm at the workshop of Lawrence Martell in Howie Center. So far the membership is limited. The first few workshops discussed:
A home made refrigerator kiln. This was demonstrated by Lawrence during the first session and was an ingenious project.
Sharpening hand saws and bandsaw blades was discussed in the second session
Carving basics was the topic in the third session
Pen making on the Taig lathe was the fourth session
Gold Guild techniques was the topic for today. Lawrence went over the use of Moawk sizing to lay down the gold and did a demo with a small piece that Paul brought. It was a "coaster" made of either plastic of metal and had grouped squares with a recessed design. It worked very nicely. The trick is not to apply the gold until the sizing is just a little tacky and once applied stipple the gold in by dabbing the brush into the workpiece if it is three dimensional. Use a brush or forceps to pick up the gold. Rub the brush into your hair and the static electricity will pick up the gold. A pencil eraser works as well.
Lawrence also demonstrated how to trace a carving design onto a workpiece. Draw the image first on paper. Use a sharp awl to put small spaced holes along the drawing lines.Apply the paper to the wood. Push the awl into the wood at the location of the holes. Then use a pencil to connect the dots on the wood to create the image . Refine the image. Apply several coats of finish like lacquer before starting to carve.Then use a sharp carving tool to cut out the design. Slow a steady is the rule. Use a small curved file to sand out the design smoothly. Lawrence also discussed the types of paint to use on a vase before doing the gold fill part. Acrylic paint is good: One can buy it at Michaels Arts store. One has to sand each coat to a fine finish before applying Lacquer.
Paul had a birch bowl turning that had some defects like cracks and small voids . It was 20 degrees humidity. He convinced Lawrence to try to dry it in the fridge lathe! We also discussed various epoxies to use for filling voids in wood. Some dry rapidly with an exothermic reaction (the epoxy gets hot!). Others dry slowly:eg Boat repair epoxy which is very porous and seeps deeply into wood. It takes 72 hours to cure.
Paul had a silicone tray he uses to bathe the wood in epoxy to fill defects and fissures in small wood pieces for pen turning. The epoxy stabilizes the wood for turning so that chip out is avoided. See photo above.
Arno demonstrated the use of the Veritas MK2 Power sharpening system. It provides a simple way to get a razor sharp edge and micro-bevel on an edge. The machine is compact but the down side is that it is expensive.
Jason Hiltz brought some lathe tools he bought at Canadian Tire and we discussed their use. NOTE: Gently soften/round the edge of the flat tools (Scrapers and skews) so that the edge does not dig into the tool rest.
Jim MacLean demonstrated and distributed to each member some ear rings he made from Canadian coins.
We agreed to add using spray guns to our topics for upcoming sessions.
Other topics for our meetings:
