The Woodturners Group met at Dick Beumer’s shop on Saturday, May10th. Dick demonstrated his Oneway 1640 lathe with the Oneway Easy Core attachment. The Easy Core System allows you to remove multiple nested bowl blanks from one piece of wood. With a 14” piece of black walnut he was able to make three individual bowls. Where conventional hollowing would have produced a mountain of shavings, Dick had but a few handfuls of waste.
John Skalla brought his Jet mini lathe and demonstrated a conventional approach to turning a bowl. With a piece of maple chucked on a tenant, John showed the basics of hollowing a bowl to produce a natural finished edge (the bark still intact at the rim). He also showed a blank attached to a faceplate and the steps in shaping and hollowing. What was interesting to note was the amount of waste produced by the conventional method verses the Easy Core System.
John had the privilege of trying Dick’s latest weapon in his turning tool arsenal; the Henry Taylor 5/8” Kryo Superflute bowl gouge. Where conventional tool steel tempering is achieved by heating, Kryo tools undergo a state-of-the-art cryogenic process in which the tool is subject to temperatures of 300 degrees below zero. The result is a complex molecular change within the steel resulting in increased wear resistance by 3 – 6 times that of heat treated M2 tool steel. For John, it was love at first try.
Our project challenge for April is to make a bowl to display at our May 21st meeting at Sauk Rapids Middle School. Bring your bowl along with a card with your name, the type of wood and finish and any other details that describes your bowl. Photos will be taken to publish on our website.
Our next meeting will be June 14th at 9:00 AM at the shop of Tom Homan, 104 Hill Street West, St. Joseph. We will be continuing our series on bowl turning with various methods and products for finishing your bowl. Our project challenge for June will be “Something That Makes Noise”. Examples include whistles, wind chimes, duck calls and music boxes.




