Wood turning

The nest box theme continues...

It's been a glorious spring this year and lets hope that another fine example of a nest box will help the local bird community to enjoy the weather and thrive in the spring sunshine.

Shirley is no stranger to wood turning but this interesting piece is the first for some time, let's hope it fires her imagination to do more on the Hub's lathes.  All the box needs now is its first brood of chicks!

Now for something completely different...

The Hub occasionally gets a request for a visitor to come along and use our equipment and draw on our 'expertise' - hence the arrival of Jon and his somewhat interesting and challenging request!  He has a background based on engineering machine shops however he quickly found out that working with steel, brass and the like doesn't easily translate into turning large pieces of some unknown hardwood.

Jon had fond memories of the tree in question over many years and was greatly saddened when he learnt of its demise a couple of years ago due to one of the many storms the country has experienced in recent times.  His gardening interests led, over time, to the conceptual idea of creating a garden sculpture based on one of his favourite flowers - the Allium and hence his request to see if the Hub could help realise his idea.

A few months later and Jon is now the proud owner and creator of a stylised bunch of Allium's all ready to stand tall in this years summer sunshine.   It was a pleasure for members of the Hub to contribute in a very small way for you to realise your dream - we hope you enjoyed the journey.

After a break of about 12 month's Shirley is back turning!

She's not entirely sure what the wood is for this stylish bowl but regardless - it's a very nice piece and it's great to see you enjoying your time making things.  Lets hope there's lots more to come!