Sculpture Turnery™
Multi-Dimensional Woodturning
Sculpture Turning™
Sculpture Turning™ is a type of turning that produces ‘artwork’ rather than work with a practical application. The uniqueness of the Sculpture Turnery lathe allows the possibility of turning shapes other than circular. Whereas traditional turning is work executed on a lathe and a cross section at any part of the axis is circular.
Turning a solid on a lathe (be it wood, metal, plastic, ceramic or stone) requires only two sets of dimensions, that is; the various diameters required together with the many different lengths along the axis, consequently traditional woodturning can loosely be described as being two-dimensional. Most turned work is essentially two-dimensional; the shape you see is a silhouette.
A Range Of Products Turned On The Lathe
The phrase ‘Three-Dimensional Turning’ may seem ambiguous since all objects have three dimensions. However, during the 1980s the Sculpture Turnery lathe was designed and built by Rod Tallack and produces fully three-dimensional, as well as conventional two-dimensional woodturning. It works by combining a lot of techniques, those that have been used for a long time by industrial manufacturers.
A Unique Lathe Filling The Gap Between
Traditional And Ornamental Turning
MANUEL du TOURNEUR by L.E.Bergeron, together with copies of some of the plates.
The shapes that Bergeron had drawn astounded me, which implied that they, the shapes, were possible to produce on the lathe that he illustrated. It had never occurred to me that such work was possible on a one-off basis. As an experienced and qualified woodworking machinist, I was familiar with a wide range of machines designed to mass-produce complex wooden shapes, but I had no idea it was possible for a lathe to produce individual pieces shown in these, albeit schematic, drawings.
Plain turned work is a solid of revolution, the shape is just a silhouette, hence in this context is only two-dimensional. The idea that one could produce three-dimensional work on a wood turning lathe set me on a course that has lasted many years.
The first move was to go to our library and get a look at the Manuel du Tourneur. The librarian was most helpful, the book had to be acquired from a central library and could not be loaned out, but I could and did Photostat (early term for photocopy) whatever was of interest. My interest was in the plates, so making a copy of each one, I paid the librarian for the copies, went home to study at leisure.
A picture is worth a thousand words goes the old saying and its true, a tremendous amount of useful information can be gathered from Bergeron’s drawings. However, for me one thing was becoming clear, this was not a machine to produce work rapidly. I was beginning to understand why three-dimensional woodturning was not a familiar every day item. There were at least three reasons,
(i) The sheer number of complicated mechanisms involved, (ii) the cost involved for these mechanisms, (iii) the amount of time it would take to produce anything of interest on the lathe as illustrated.
Shortly after the visit to the library, the magazine ‘Model Engineer’ published an article by someone who had acquired a Holtzapffel Lathe, together with the text were some excellent images of the lathe and a large number of accessories. This only added to my growing conviction that the machine as illustrated would be far too slow for the type of work I had in mind. A visit to the science museum in London to see some of the lathes on show did nothing to abate this view.
All the turning work I had seen up to this time had the hallmarks of being labours of love, superb in design and execution. However, where are the people who are prepared to pay even basic wages for this very high level of skill and expertise? What I had in mind was a lathe that could produce three-dimensional woodturning of a high standard but without the intricate detail, in a reasonable time.
This is where the journey began on how the design of the lathe that produced three dimensional work evolved.
Rod Tallack
About Rod Tallack
After leaving school at 14, I had a couple of jobs in light engineering that was boring and I quit. Next, there came a job in a timber yard as an assistant to one of the many machinists employed there. In this environment, compared to engineering, the smell of freshly cut pine was intense and wonderful and had me captivated into the timber trade.
During the following years (including a two year break for National Service) I had learned to operate all of the various machines employed in the yard and had obtained the full City & Guilds qualifications as a Woodworking Machinist. (Three evenings a week at college, alas no day release).
It became time to move on.
During the next years I had a series of jobs employed as a machinist, gaining the extra experience necessary to be fully proficient in the diverse range of the woodworking industries; for example, Mass production of furniture, Bespoke furniture, Mass production of Joinery, Bespoke Architectural Joinery.
Then I had an office position for three and a half years employed as a Planning Engineer, an extra bonus was that half of the factory was devoted to metalwork; this was an opportunity for me to gain an understanding of machine shop engineering practices; lathes, milling machines, welding etc. which in later years was to prove very useful.
There was a return to the shop floor as a woodworking machinist for several years, before moving on into education.
For the next ten years I was engaged in teaching teenagers and adults the knowledge and skills required to be safe and to qualify as Woodworking Machinists.
After the decade of teaching, it was time to leave and do something different.
I was in need of a change and chose to set up a business sharpening and grinding the saws and tools required by the timber trades. In addition, as the venture developed, sharpening tools for the engineering industries became a part of the business.
For the Woodturner with Artistic Flair -
Producing Endlessly Creative 3D Shapes