Multi-Axis Turning HOW TO Resource

Need a break from the normal single axis symetry of your usual pieces?

Occassionally get bored with turning circles? Sure, you're turning profiles with nice "fair curves", interesting profiles and perfect proportions - but every cross section is - ROUND.

Round & Brown - plates, bowls, hollow forms, spindles, finials - those are all fun to turn. But after a while . . . just ROUND ain't enough.

Wings are interesting - challenging - and a bit dangerous - especially the way Jimy Clewes turns them - at 3,800 rpms. But even winged pieces are still turned on just ONE axis - a single axis of symetry.

You've probably seen Escoulen's Multi-Axis turnings - and wondered HOW IN THE HELL CAN HE DO THAT!?

Maybe you've tried multi-axis turning - but your results seem to be so unpredictable. Multi-axis turning seems so chaotic - I Wanted THIS - but - I Got THAT. Trying to work out multi-axis CAUSE & EFFECT can give you a headache?

So you abandoned playing with multi-axis turning - too complicated - too confusing - too unpredictable - too CHAOTIC.

OK - so maybe I'm the ONLY one who had that experience ; )

Well - someone has FINALLY started bringing ORDER OUT OF MULTI-AXIS CHAOS - and has put together a Systematic Method of connecting CAUSE with EFFECT - that's understandable. Mre importantly - YOU can APPLY it

- and start GETTING the results you WANT.

The person you want to thank for bringing order to the apparent chaos of multi-ais turning is - Barbara Dill. After first seeing multi-axis turning being done back in 1993, she recently (over the last three or four years) began developing a systematic method of thinking about multi-axis Cause & Effect - a mental model of how multi-axis turning works - what does what, how and why.

Here's the link to her website. Check out her Gallery: Multi-Axis Work

- and then download and go through her Multi-Axis Paper.

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When you've gone through her Paper a couple of times - THE CLOUDS WILL PART, THE SUN OF UNDERSTANDING WILL SHINE THROUGH, THE ANGELS WILL SING - and you'll head off to your lathe to begin applying what you've learned - to create YOUR OWN multi-axis pieces! Yet another whole new turning world to explore - and exploit!

Reply to
charlie b
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Great reference, highly informative and very clear. I'm unlikely to try most of the possibilities mentioned, but even the basic ones look interesting.

Thanks

->Posted by Ozum

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Reply to
wells

If you started now, and turned just the things you can do with coves, beads and Vs - you'd probably still be doing a fraction of the possibilities -without playing with TWISTING - by the end of the year!

Google's SketchUp is a FREE 3D program you can download and play with. If you click on the illustatration on this page, you can download the SketchUp file and look at it in SketchUp - from any perspective.

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And here's my feeble attempt at trying to conceptualize Cause & Effect.
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Multi axis turning is really fun to play with and explore. But be aware, it's like potato chips - you can't stop with just a few . . .

Reply to
charlie b

I particularly like her fluted pieces and her "studio", but the multiaxial and split turning pieces appear awkward to me. Like a three-legged horse. My mind craves grace and symmetry. Symptoms, no doubt, of a simple mind.

Reply to
Gerald Ross

We are "hard wired" to initially be wary of the unfamiliar and acepting of the familiar. The unfamiliar makes us uncomfortable. We tend to stick with what we know - or think we know. Paradoxically, our species is also hard wired to be adaptive.

There is grace and symetry in Barbara's work - her four arcs tea set - for example. Cindy Drozda's "three sided" lidded boxes with beautiful proportions and elegant finials are another example. Gary Fisher's multi-axis plaques, for want of a better term, are yet another example.

Because we are not accustomed to seeing intersecting arcs rather than the more familiar single axis - full round cross sections - and the predictable profile of traditional lathe turned pieces - it's initially difficult to see the symetry that is

- in fact -present in multi axis pieces.

But to see the grace and symetry one must see beyond round cross sections - which

- by their nature - have the same profile as you walk around them or as you rotate them. By using intersecting arcs, only parts of circles - the profile changes as the piece is rotated. It can merely change proportions - looking taller and narrower - then more like the familiar Golden Ratio (or 1/3rd above, 2/3rds below or 2/5ths above, 3/5ths below a shoulder). And it introduces edges where arcs meet - something that you don't get to play with when limited to single axis turning turned to circular cross sections.

Round and Brown has had hundreds of years to develop its aesthetics - and based on several thousand years of ceramic "thrown" pieces. Multi axis turning is relatively new - Francoise Escoulen being one of the ground breakers and first internationally recognized multi axis turner - came on the turning scene only about a dozen years ago.

Like anything new in arts / crafts, multi axis turning "takes some getting use to". And "getting use to" multi axis turnings requires a bit of work -both on the part of the audience / viewer and the multi axis turner - mostly by the multi axis turners. And if the audience / viewer is a wood turner - who does single axis turning - the multi axis turner has to workeven harder to educate / cultivate single axis turners.

By providing a structure for conceptual models of the basics of multi axis turning

- something essential for the unfamiliar to become familiar - Barbara Dill has provided the basic tools / concepts to do that. And with that structure, she's provided anyone who wants to explore multi axis turning with a map - and compass - the underlying concepts and techniques to literally turn a concept into a reality. Using those "tools", people will come up with all sorts of new pieces - some good, some not so good. But, in time, and with more exposure, aesthetics for multi axis pieces will develop and become more familiar - and accepted - by not only turners, but also by collectors, galleries and museums.

Fortunately, the turning community is pretty open to new ideas and techniques. And that probably explains why turning is growing in leaps and bounds.

Reply to
charlie b

For an aesthetic to develop, a vocabulary for it is necessary in order for artists / artisans to share concepts / ideas and techniques

For single axis wood turnings, the aesthetics - and vocabulary - were already there - created by potters who ?threw? pieces on a potter?s wheel long before the advent of the lathe and wood turning tools. The mediums and methods are different, but the resulting shapes and forms, along with their proportions were basically the same.

For turning, we play with three fundamental components - beads, coves and grooves ( concave or convex curves and intersecting straight lines)

- to create the profile of a single axis symetric piece - with round cross sections.

The profile of a single axis piece turned to round cross sections is predictable, Turn it about its axis - and the profile remains constant. There?s no need to think about the profile we see - because we already have a mental model of what single axis symetric things are - some idea of how they?re created - and a set of mental criteria for what looks good and what doesn?t. The look of the wood may change - but the profile remains constant - no surprises - no ?Wait a Minute. The Profile Changed! HUH!?? - no conscious thinking is required to interpret what we are seeing before deciding if we like a piece or not.

There?s a vocabulary to describe single axis, round cross section, thrown or turned shapes / forms (profile, shoulder, neck, foot, lift, transitions, fair curves, balance, etc.) as well as a set of accepted proportions - for plates, bowls and hollow forms. Spindle turning has basically the same vocabulary though the ?rules? for proportions are less defined.

Multi axis and eccentric turning is just beginning to develop it?s own vocabulary - and Barbara Dill?s Multi Axis Papers, DVD, demos, presentations and multi axis turnings just may be the foundation for the aesthetic that will develop for multi axis turned pieces.

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Reply to
charlie b

On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:55:07 -0500, charlie b wrote (in message ):

Charlie, thanks for the info about Google Sketchup! I never considered that such a swell piece of software was available - for free and includes the mac platform. This will be a great way to test out some shapes and ideas, and lots of other non-woodturning projects, as well.

Anent multi-axis turnings, my own efforts in this form have been mainly limited to replacement hammer handles and other fairly straightforward projects. I do have some ambitious (or adventurous - for me) projects in mind but will not be able to get to them for awhile, yet. They will require that I first manufacture some specialized chucks for what I want to do. tom koehler

Reply to
tom koehler

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