By Tim Griffiths

His theme was 'bottoms'.
Peter Williams showed us that bottoms can be finished in a variety of ways, with a single foot, two, three or five feet. Peter also showed us that to make the piece more 'lifelike' and attractive, he introduced spiral patterns or textures, as he said that nature naturally produced spirals and three sided leaves and petals. So we should try and reflect this in our finishing.

Peter demonstrated some alternative methods for holding a piece to finish off the bottom without using a vacuum chuck. He showed us how to use hot glue in conjunction with a piece of nylon line, which acted as a releasing component.
To centre the piece he used a Morse taper adaptor for the chuck and mounted the chuck, with the piece into the tailstock, ensuring that the tailstock and headstock are correctly lined up. Then securing the piece to a home made MDF faceplate.

He also showed us another method of securing the piece using a wooden ring with an internal taper of the appropriate diameter. then secured the piece onto a homemade wooden faceplate with the wooden rings screwed to the faceplate.