Turn an Elephant and Twelve Other Projects to Hone Your Turning Skills

About the Book

This book, written by an experienced amateur wood turner for other amateurs, takes the turner through thirteen projects, each one developing new skills and techniques, which are explained and illustrated by ‘hands on’ photos and full diagrams. These allow the reader to progress stage by stage through every item. By the end of making all the objects, the turner will have an impressive gallery of work and become an expert in his own right.

About the Author

During the 1930s, the author’s father, a tailor by trade, converted the basement of their home in London to a games’ room, lining the walls, fitting a ceiling and laying a floor. Brian Oram thus had an early introduction to woodwork, the use of a workshop and unlimited supply of wood off cuts. Both father and son made small toys and other ‘art’ items and in the shortages of wartime London, these were sold for modest amounts within the local community. So, from the time he was old enough to hold a penknife, Brian Oram has made things in wood, graduating through marriage and family to building sheds, bookcases, dining and coffee tables, cots, children’s toys such as a rocking horse and a doll’s house. Bigger projects included boat repair and the rebuilding of an old wooden, ex-working canal boat, which was used for family holidays for twenty years. Early retirement in the 1980s, gave him the opportunity to use the wood turning facility of his Shopsmith to develop a new skill in woodturning. Attendance at a beginner’s, and later, an intermediate standard woodturning course, was followed by Membership of a Woodturning Club, which introduced him to the concept of a ‘monthly project’ leading to turning shapes and objects, previously outside the simple range of the wooden bowl.