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woodezine - Volume
III - Issue VI - JUNE 2005
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Bill Tarleton
"The bowls I make are to be used.
I am really not into art works to just look at.
Sometimes I find a real nice piece of wood that deserves
to sit on a shelf, but most look good and are useful, too."
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Bill Tarleton is one of America's quiet heroes. I've known him for a while now, mostly as the volunteer Web guru for Diablo Woodowrkers in California. He is incredibly generous with his time and resources. |
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| On his own Web site, for example, he has published a list of free guidelines for people new to turning. They cover everything from working with green wood and drying lumber, to quartersawing it with a chainsaw or turning trays, bowls and hollow vessels. |
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If you visit the Diablo Woodworkers' site, you'll see Bill and several of his fellow members working on casework that they just built for the Concord Veterans' Center in California. The finishing crew - Bill Tarleton, Ron Kersey, Bob Barnett, and Dan DeGennaro - are shown at right. Bill told us that "the club members donated money to purchase the lumber and donated time and workshop space to build and deliver and install the bookshelves. Dan DeGennaro was the leader of this project." |
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Like most truly generous people, Bill is a bit tight with himself. He has been using the same wood lathe for about 50 years, after purchasing it at age 16! The lathe is an 11"x36" Delta Homecraft. He has performed extensive modifications over the years (shown at left), the most dramatic of which is a set of risers that have extended the potential diameter of his turnings. (Bill explains the process in detail on his Web site.) |
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An imaginative turner, Bill produces some pieces that just leave you scratching your head. I still haven't figured out how he glued up the black walnut segmented bowl shown at left. It has interlocking silver maple rings and it measures 13" in diameter by about 5" in height. The bowl is finished with several coats of a clear, food safe salad bowl finish. |
| The wood Bill turns is "collected mostly from San Francisco East Bay city trees that are taken down by storms, street or home repairs, or disease. Milling is done with a chainsaw and lots of heavy lifting. Curing is done either by letting the rough cut wood air dry and then turning it on a lathe, or the green fresh cut wood is lathe turned into a finished item and then allowed to dry." |
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Black walnut bowl with silver maple accents, 11" dia X about 3" high. |
Bill specializes in unique and affordable turned wood platters, black walnut bowls, black walnut trays, vases, segmented vessels, oak music boxes and small wood toys that are made from hardwoods common to our urban forests (city trees). When he says affordable, he really means it. The interlocking ring bowl shown above is listed on his site at $400, and the 11" walnut bowl at left is priced at just $60! His motto is "Satisfaction Guaranteed or Money Cheerfully Refunded." |
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While Bill Tarleton doesn't blow his own trumpet, he is very proud of the members of the Diablo Woodworkers. "Our current project at the Diablo Woodworkers," Bill told Woodezine, "is building toys for needy children. This is our first toy-making project, with a tremendous effort at member Dan DeGennaro's shop every Tuesday evening. Twenty-four 6-car train sets have been completed already. The guys are now working on toy trucks, treasure boxes and some educational toys for the very young."
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Black walnut vase, 6" diameter X 8" high |
| "Thanks to Dan," he says, "this project is a great success. We also continue to build Flag Cases for local families who have lost a police or fireman relative and are memorialized with a flag. These are the same design (black walnut/silver maple) as the 120 or so that we made for the 9/11 families as part of the Woodworkers United for America effort. One of our members, Phil Cullen of San Ramon, was the originator of that concept. Once he introduced the idea, George Dubois of Salem, Oregon asked if he could use it and, with others, formed Woodworkers United for America. They made several thousand cases all over the U.S." |
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If you're new to turning, visit Bill's Web site (just click on the image at left) and look for the heading TECHNIQUES along the top of any page. Click for the pull-down menu shown here and select a tutorial on any of the subjects shown. Final note: This is from an e-mail received from Bill a few days before this issue went live... "Well, I really need to update my Web site.
For the first 50 years, I did use that wonderful old lathe. Now I have
retired it and brought in a Powermatic 3520a. This is a wonderful machine
that removes all the problems I had with my old lathe. I now have the
power needed to use bowl saver tools, making more than one bowl from
a piece of wood; turn large diameters; run quiet; handle out-of-balance
chunks of wood beautifully; and the cost is reasonable. I just cannot
compliment Powermatic enough for this machine. Also, I don't mind (the
material on my Web site) being used by others. Sharing information is
what woodworking is all about. |
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All text and images on this page are copyrighted and used with the artist's permission. |