Tuesday, June 16

Today was a full day of wood turning.  Breakfast was at 7 o'clock in the morning and classes began immediately at 8 o'clock. We worked until 10 when we took a little break, then continued working until 1 o'clock lunch, with about an hour and a half break. After lunch it was back to turning with a break it about four o'clock. We kept going until almost 6:30. They said supper would be at 8 o'clock that evening, but it was almost 830 when it finally got to the table but of course the French love sitting around talking, so it was almost 9:30 before we finished and cleaned up. And so I'm in my room trying to get this blog off. I am in a little village called Aiguines in the French Alps. It is a very beautiful and scenic place, although I haven't gotten out to explore much yet. There is an old castle here in town and a great view out over Lake St. Croix. Today was pretty cloudy and cool;  there was even a thunderstorm in the afternoon, and there is always a breeze, so it hasn't been hot.
There are five of us taking this woodturning class; 3 Frenchman, Guy, Daniel, and Christof, a lady from Canada, Ruby, and myself. That it means of that there is a lot of French being spoken and not a lot of English though the instructor Jean-Claude Charpignon speaks English just fine. It was a great day of woodturning as we began learning how make a Chinese ball. So the rest of this blog will be a little more technical about woodturning, so that I'll have my notes to be able to write an article for our wood turning site. So I'll understand if you want to stop reading now.
We began by learning how to turn a perfect sphere free handed. To do so, you first turn a cylinder 65 millimeters in diameter and 67 millimeters long, with a line drawn exactly at the center. You then make a chuck with a 90 millimeter diameter hole going 30 millimeters deep. This will hold the cylinders you just turned. You pound it in sideways, and then you begin to turn its corners down to the line made in the middle of your cylinder. When this is done you have a perfect half of a sphere On a half cylinder. Then you need a second jig with just a 64 millimeter hole 30 millimeters deep in which the half just turned now is forced in tightly. Then you can finish turning the other half of your sphere in the same way.  After a little sanding you should have a perfect 65 millimeter diameter sphere. If it's not exact, it probably won't work. I thought I was doing pretty good but I had several of my spheres fly out of my chuck. It seems I was trying to use a push cut, which I use all the time when turning bowls, but it didn't work here. Finally, when the second one flew across the room, the Jean-Claude came over and showed me how to do a proper cut. You needed to rub the bevel, holding the bowl of the gouge at a 45 degree angle with the handle down. And then I had no problems and, in fact, manage to produce four nice spheres. The question will be: are they exactly 65 millimeters in diameter. They seem to have gotten smaller like 64 and a half millimeter in diameter - which might not work. But we still managed to begin marking off the spheres with 12 points of the dodecahedron. Then we need a whole new setup -  with a special jig to hold the shere and a special set of tools to begin cutting the interior spheres. I had just begun to start on my first hole when we quit for the day. So it was a great day of wood turning. I really enjoyed it. I've learned a lot and I'm looking forward to the rest of the week, after getting a good night's sleep, of cource.
I hope everyone had a good day I'll write more tomorrowl