Friday, August 10, 2007

Wood Turning Spindles

One of the things I have been thinking about lately as I consider wood turning in general and the art work I see on the web or at shows in particular, is the lack of spindle turning. While I grant you that chair makers and the like turn a lot of the same spindle shapes day after day and consider it more craft than art, what about artistic spindle work? Is all of it architectural? What about lamps and candle holders? Maybe gavels and mallets? Many of us seem to be caught in the grip of the chuck or faceplate and wood turning has become faceplate turning. the exception of course is pen turners today although I find many of my pens are pretty much straight turning. Perhaps I need to return to spindles for a while and see what comes of it.

1 comment:

François said...

I agree we are all to much focusing on face plate / chuck turning. I recently tried excentric spindle turning, this is both challenging and interesting and I think I'll give this technique some more attention.
I've no picture yet, but of few other projects (mostly face place turning ;-) ). You can see the same at http://boisetcopeaux.blogspot.com (comments are much welcome as I'm always looking for comments to make progress ;-) )