Some 40 Members enjoyed a chatty & humorous evening with Les Thorne, (who had come from a day's work turning green Oak).
Les envied a hobby woodturner's lot who could turn what and when they liked.
He was a Jobbing Woodturner, which meant he had to turn what others wanted for when they wanted them.
Consequently, he listed his hobbies as golf & fishing and never woodturning.

His woodturning meant constantly looking at how long a job would take. For example, if his first gouge work was to turn the piece from square to a cylinder, he would reduce time wasted in moving his tool rest from its starting position by cutting several squares at a time into octagons with his bandsaw; when there are 100 units to turn, that apparent extra job saves about an hour overall.

Since his last visit, he has moved away from colour and texturing demonstrations as he had noticed that very few recreational woodturners chose such finishes in preference to just working with the wood.
Tonight, Les was making a box with a reversible finial while spotlighting basic gouge work and planning considerations along the way.
Starting with a 3½" octagon of Oak for the body and 2 pieces of Sycamore (which Les considers as Hampshire Weed) for the base and for the double ended finial.

The Oak octagon was mounted between centres and turned to a cylinder.
From a professional's point of view to be productive, one has to be as quick and effective as possible and there is no reason why the hobbyist shouldn't be the same.
Les talked about presenting the Roughing Gouge at its 'sweet point' and maintaining the angle with body movement.  Faster body movement achieved quicker removal but concluding with slower movements achieved a smoother finish.
A common fault with hobbyists was allowing the bevel angle to get larger than the ideal 40°- 45° when sharpening. A longer bevel may have a weaker edge but it remains sharper for longer if always presented at its 'sweet point'.
Les used the centre quadrant of his Roughing Gouge's cutting edge for the quick removal and kept the outer quadrants sharp for his smoother finishes.

With a cylinder turned, he needed a spigot to fit his chuck. Les prefers to create this at the head stock end of the piece where the best support is found.

The initial hollowing could be done with a gouge or a drill. If the latter, he suggested to enlarge the centre point of the piece with the tip of your tool sufficiently to avoid the drill bit 'skating' over the end surface and ending up off-centre.
Les started with a Spindle Gouge with a reasonably fast lathe speed to better throw out the shavings.
He finished off the hollowing showing the pros & cons of various hollowing tools.

(click for close up view)
Surprisingly, the smallest diameter scraper seemed to be the quickest at removing the inside.

Les is a great advocate for not letting a spigot dictate the size of the base. In tonight's case, the hollowed body was shaped like a trophy cup finishing off narrow at the bottom allowing only a small diameter spigot. An appropriate design to connect to the base was small at the top, wide enough at the bottom to avoid topple while remaining squat overall. He demonstrated how his Detail Tool could get into tight spaces and how it could produce a smooth finish with just its pointed corner.
Rather than parting off completely, Les chose to part down to leave a central stub of a couple of millimetres diameter which could then be easily & accurately removed with abrasives.

Finials need to be in balance with the overall piece; what Les described as, "seen but not heard."  They shouldn't dominate nor should they appear measly. The ideal woods to select for fine detailing tend to be fruit woods; Cherry, Holly etc.
Tonight's finial was going to be double ended so thought had to be given as to how to mount the wood to turn the second finial after completing the first.
With the last piece of Sycamore between centres, Les turned a spigot to fit his chuck and demonstrated various techniques to produce a tall, thin finial coming from a base turned accurately to the top lip of the finished body.
Having cunningly planned the diameter of the body's lid to be oversized compared to the chuck's true circle diameter, there was now plenty of room for the tall thin finial to disappear down the centre of the chuck while allowing the jaws to grip the first finial's base securely before turning the second finial.
There is little point in turning a identical finial to the first so Les decided upon a door knob type.

(click for close up view)

It is worth noting that all surfaces in the above photos are remarkably, just tool finished.
Les didn't want to bother with abrasives in order to complete the demonstration within time.