Mick Giles
Woodturning Courses
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Woodturning and workshop courses
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A big finial, turned by little Max
Young Max is an apprentice at my local joiners, they call him Little Max because there are 2 Max's working there, he's been coming to my workshop one day a week since December 2024 learning woodturning, Ive been turning for Sarah Louise Interiors Ltd for many years, there always busy, and very friendly, this finial from a heratage site in Portsmouth was rotton and they where asked to replace it, this was the perfect project for Max to use all his experience to produce an identical replacement, I watched at a distance and guided as we went through it but Max did all the turning, Im very impressed with how much he has learnt, it usually takes time to get the feel of the tool on the timber and Max has learnt well.
This bottom section weighed 31kg, it was made from 16 pieces of 100mm x 100mm Sapele.
The base now turned it weighs in at 11.5kg thats 14.5 kg of shaving! thank goodness I can use their skip.
The base was cut to 8 sides and mounted on my Wivamac DB800 lathe using 7/8 Steb Centres set 10mm into each end, despite its now 26kg it was very nicely balanced thank goodness.
This is probaly the heaviest bit of turning young Max is ever going to be asked to turn.
The finial was screwed onto a 140mm x 16mm Stainless Steel threaded rod set into the buildings roof, so we drilled a 50mm hole into the base to take a 50mm x 160mm timber plug.
The timber plug was 160mm x 50mm and was drilled with 2 correct sized holes, this blank was then split in two lengthwise, the connector was set in epoxy resin and the timber joint was D4 PVA glue, then held together with jubilee clips, once dried it was glued into the base of the finial. The design was to have an 80mm 18mm hole in the base for alingning the bolt onto the connector without damaging the thread.
This middle section had a 40mm hole drilled into it for the top section spigot to fit into it, we turned a 40mm plug to temperarily plug this hole to take the steb centre for turning.
The bottom and middle section together for the first time.
This picture was taken after a good cleanup in the workshop.
This is the middle and top sections before we cut to 8 sides for turning
The old and the new together.
And the final picture after many coats of paint, it reportadly screwed on like a dream. "Its all about the attention to detail"
The first job of copy turning is to draw the object full size, unfortunatly the top 2 section where draw on a bit of boards and didnt photograph well.
Max's first set of four matching spindles
Its fairly easy to turn one spindle, but turning 4 identical spindles can be a challenge, so as a project I asked Max to design and draw, then turn 4 coffee table legs, it was unfortunate that when choosing the timber Max didnt get the legs at the same time as the rails and there was a difference in the grain and colours of the timbers, so Max consulted the sprayer where he works and stained the timber before giving it a coat of clear lacquer, theres a very good lesson learnt there. If you look closley at the pommel ie square to round section you will see that it goes from square to round and back to square flowing into round, this design appeared when I was turning the Pommel on a scrap piece of wood to show max what it looks like so he could draw it, it looked so cool we decided to incorperate it.
