Turning off centre

The third post in my trivet series. There is a video at  the end of this post.  Having marked out the centres and marked them with a scratch awl the next thing is to get turning. The two piece jam chuck allows the blank to be moved. The backing plate is attached to the lathes by a face plate in this instance. It is possible to glue a piece of wood to the backing plate or if thick enough turn a Tenon. The choice is really yours. I thought that a $12 face plate was cheap enough. I can always reuse it for another project.

The chuck that takes the turning plank has recess  6 mm recess that is 150 mm in diameter. Continue reading “Turning off centre”

Marking out the trivets

The second post on the subject of trivets. I have been attempting to make the trivets which feature concentric circles on one side and three circles on the reverse side. Each of the circles must be turned off centre. The attached video shows laying out the off centre circles. The blank is 150 mm in diameter and about 15 mm thick. Two concentric circles are dawn one being 70 mm the other 140 mm. Use the indexing feature of the lathe to divide into sections. I used the first six points and the tool rest to section the blank. Continue reading “Marking out the trivets”

Actually making trivets

I have written previously about making trivets, back in September last year. In the earlier post I described making the trivets. This then is the first in a series of posts that describe and show how I made the trivets. I finally decided in December 2012 to get on with it and finish some trivets before Christmas. Essentially they are a 150 mm wooden disk about 15 mm thick. One side has a series of concentric circles turned on the face to half the depth of the disk. the obverse has a group of three concentric circle turned to a similar depth. Continue reading “Actually making trivets”

Adobe Premiere Elements 8 First Impressions

Adobe Premiere Elements icon
Image via Wikipedia

This is my foray into Adobe Video editing software. I have been a long time user of Pinnacle Studio (PS) having used this application through several versions. Version 14 I decided to try something different and looked to Adobe Premiere Elements (APE). I only use video editing for home movies so I need an application that is relatively simple to use. APE offers some advantages PS mostly the ability to use multiple video and audio tracks. The interface is not too different but the means of achieving the same is quite different.

Editing is relatively straightforward as is adding audio. The addition of Smartsounds allows the generation of royalty free music to accompany your video. The DVD menu system works well but requires a great deal of manual input. Once all the menu and scene markers are added to the timeline the preconfigured menus pickup all the scenes. My first project in APE was one and half hours long . The program crashed a few times during the editing process. This proved frustrating as the most recent changes hadn’t been saved. I am running Windows 7 64 bit. The rendering of the video files took nearly 2 hours and occupied a 100% of the Core 2 Duo’s attention.

The results were satisfactory but I had to resort using online video tutorials to get the most of the program. I think for a complete novice to video editing the learning curve would be quite steep. On balance Pinnacle Studio is easier for the novice.

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