The Nittany Valley Woodturners welcomed Danielle Barbour, an accomplished woodturner featured in the American Association of Woodturners magazine. She demonstrated flower turning, shared her work, and discussed Women in Turning.
Danielle Barbour began turning in 2016. She passed out a handout that described her skew flowers. Her real job is emergency room nurse practitioner and turning helps her cope with that stress. She took lessons in bowl and hollow forms from David Ellsworth. She mostly uses a skew to shave a piece of wood, forming petals of a flower, Her flowers range in diameter from about an inch to 10 inches. She uses very green wood (recently cut or pruned in the spring), and many different species of wood. The blanks should be straight, with the pith centered, and free of knots and bark inclusions.
Danielle starts with the blank mounted between centers (cone live center, drive center held by the chuck jaws—steb center or cone) Using a roughing gouge she removed the bark and the cadmium layer and formed a tenon on one end. She then removed the blank and the drive center, remounting the blank with the pin jaws of the chuck and the live center cone. She keeps the tail stock close with the spindle as short as possible to reduce vibration of the blank.
Using a planing cut with her skew (1.5 inch skew with 50 degree included angle) she uses a planing cut to shave the tail stock end of the blank towards the head stock, pushing up the shaved wood into petals. She uses the tip of the heal of the skew to make very light planing cuts. The tool rest is angled away from the head stock so that the tool rest does not hit the petals.
She parts the flower off the blank with a “V” cut. Using Zinzer’s two-part wood bleach, she whitens the flowers to prepare them for paint. She uses Golden Fluid Acrylic with “wet” water to paint the flowers after they have completely dried from the bleaching. She attaches the flowers to aluminum or copper rods that are wrapped in a green tape—tape rather than painted rods as the paint would crack when the rods were bent during arranging the flowers for display.
Danielle explained how the Women in Turning (WIT) concept is practiced at her club. She showed the October 2024 issue of the America Association of Woodturners (AAW) magazine, featuring her flowers and several wood piercing bowls and ornaments. She also encouraged people to attend the Mid Atlantic Woodturning Symposium,
