Hi

Happy Easter! It’s been a somewhat hectic week for me, which included a demo at Lincolnshire Association of Woodturners on Tuesday. It was a great evening and very well attended. A great set-up, and a nice bunch of members. Plus they have their own shop selling our products for their members, which looked busy on the night.

If your club would like to sell Chestnut Products, please get in touch!

A common question I get asked when demonstrating on the lathe is what speed I recommend to work at.

I usually have the lathe running at around 1100rpm. I’m comfortable with it at that speed, and I’m able to do pretty much everything I want to. But it’s very much a personal choice, there’s no real right or wrong answer. The speed will depend very much on the size and shape of the item spinning, and, once again, personal choice.

There’s no need to run the lathe at top speed when polishing, and it can even be detrimental to the finish. I’d suggest starting at around 1100rpm, and seeing if it suits you. You can always adjust it if it’s not doing what you want it to.

If you’ve seen/endured one of my demonstrations, you’ll know that I often use Burnishing Cream during it. It’s a great ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ product, ideal if you haven’t quite got the shine you want. Its fine abrasive will cut a surface back, and burnish it to a higher gloss. It can be used on lots of products, and I was asked to list them.

What might seem like a relatively basic question came up during my demo, but it’s only basic if you know the answer! It’s always worth remembering that a turning newbie could be uncertain about some of the terms and jargon we take for granted.

The example here was about abrasives. The questioner was pretty sure he already knew the answer, but wanted to double-check…
Does a higher abrasive number mean a finer grade?

You might already know that ‘yes’ is the answer to this one, but do you know why? The grading (80,120,180 etc) refers to the size of the grit, and the P prefix (which can only be used by members of the Federation of European Producers of Abrasives (FEPA)) denotes an even distribution of it.