Duncan Hoyle

As I'll soon be heading to Scotland (but unfortunately missing the World Porridge Championships) I thought I'd try making a spurtle. Never having used or even seen one before I basically just made a spindle with a handle at one end and not much decoration at the other (to avoid stuck food).
Total length is 23cm. Wood is Hawthorn and finish is home-made bees/carnauba wax mix.

So here it is then, my first post of completed work. 2 boxes made over the last 3 days, although the sycamore one is perhaps pushing the definition of box a bit too far.

Both are about 10cm tall and are finished with Chestnut Microcrystalline Wax, which I was using for the first time. Appears to work well and buffs up to a glossy finish.

Here's another action shot. I was attempting to capture the length of shavings that you can get when wet wood is cutting well and the tool is freshly sharpened. Well over 2m is possible.

And yes, this project is also still on the bench waiting to be finished

Wet wood can be translucent when turned thin enough, and this property can be used to your advantage to help achieve a uniform wall thickness.

As wood drys it's cells shrink at different rates depending on their type orientation. If the walls of a turning are uniform it allows for uniform cell shrinkage throughout and enables the walls to move as they shrink. If the walls are too think or are of uneven thickness then the stresses in them when they attempt to shrink due to drying can cause them to split.

When using the property to your advantage you can put a light inside the turning and continue removing wood until you have a uniform glow. As you can see from the slightly darker section at the base I didn't do a perfect job with this one. Luckily, when the wood dries it looses this translucency (unless the wood is really thin) so no-one will know.

The piece is still, of course, sat in the shed waiting to be finished...

This was a month or so before my decision to start a blog but I thought it would be interesting to give an idea of the business end of the shed and show my fashionable spring turning attire! Note the fetching headgear combo of air filter mask and upside down ear defenders (with wires leading to noise deadening headphones and mp3 player).

The tool is a home-made job combining a 3/4" square steel bar and a Woodchuck carbide insert