The current inclement weather has been making it hard to get much polelathe turning done. I have a lot of coppicing and tree work to do on the commons as well but with snow lying on the ground that's impractical for a few days. But with the stove in place I can at least get some turning done. The stove has now burnt a lot of the rubbish that used to lie around and it almost looks like a workshop at last.
The two new bowl hooks forged from the broken ends of the Range Rover springs have been an improvement on my previous hooks even though the limited heat of my furnace and tools has made them a bit uneven. The small hook (foreground) works really well for undercutting the bowl core, the bigger hook is quite unevenly bent but still works well, through differently on each side! At the back for comparison is one of the previous hooks I made, a bit too thin and curved too far but it works very well as a finishing tool.
One of the first trials with the new hooks on a birch bowl.
Photo quality is not all it could be but I had to turn with one hand and hold the camera with the other hand until I find a better way to mount the camera in the right place.
It's a bit early to tell yet, but the new hooks seem to have decreased the time it takes for me to turn a bowl, and I can hope that practice will make perfect.
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