I didn't turn this, but I wish I had - Japanese Winged Box

Last week end I attended the Chicago Area Woodturners' three-day symposium, "Turn On! Chicago." As in 2008, it was held at the St. Mary's on the Lake Seminary campus, in Mundelein, IL - an incredibly beautiful campus setting. About 220 of us were there for a series of ten rounds of demonstrations by professional and very talented amateur turners. There were five alternative venues for each round, so there was a great deal of picking and choosing. Among the sessions I attended were three by Jimmy Clewes (originally from New Castle, England, and now Las Vegas, NV) and three with Cindy Drozda (of Boulder, CO).

At the charity auction following our Saturday night dinner, I had the good fortune to bid in the demo piece that Jimmy had turned at one of the sessions I had attended - the Japanese Winged Box shown in the photos below. He turned the base from a solid piece of cherry 10" x 4" x 2" mounted on a screw chuck and running at an incredibly fast 3200 rpm. It sounded like a close-up airplane propeller! For purposes of the demo he also made the box lid (turned from a separate block of cherry) snap-on tight, so you have to pry it off. (You wouldn't do this for a gallery piece, but this was a show-off piece for turners.) And he did all this in less than an hour and a half while talking about what he was doing and telling stories at the same time. really amazing!

I've added a link to Jimmy's web site in the links column to the left.