As of Feb 2005 all prices are now in Australian dollars. Exchange rates have become too unstable between sterling, the US dollar and the Australian dollar for me to fix prices in those currencies. Customers in all countries, please refer to the Australian Dollar prices.

My portable bobbin-making workstation.

Too long! In reality, the 20 years experience I have is what it takes to do what I do now. I rarely take a piece of wood and sit down and produce a bobbin from it directly. With the inlaid bobbins it is a multiple stage process, and I generally work on batches of 50 to 200 of a particular design at one time for any particular stage, Typically these are:

Cutting wood from the state in which I purchase it; converting into cylindrical shape; preparing sections of inlay material; assembling inlay and body of bobbin; turning the prepared blank on the lathe.

So you can see that most of the work is not on the lathe, at least for the inlaid and fancy bobbins. Having produced the bobbin, I then have to spangle it, and allocate it to orders or stock, after labelling it. Tool maintenance in the workshop is a daily routine - all the turning tools need to be sharpened often several times. Larger bits of equipment like bandsaws need regular and time consumning maintenance too.

I also do all my own office work: email, faxes, letters, accounts, computer programming and maintenance, database maintenance, phone calls, photocopying, banking and VISA card dockets, packing and despatch of orders, going to the mail box (10 km), etc! So, if I can produce more than 30 bobbins in a day, that is a good day.

I produce all the bobbins on a special bobbin making lathe made by David Francis of Nottingham, UK. This is shown above. This is without doubt the finest machine by far for small scale work that I have ever seen or used, and I have tried a number - it is well thought out, designed by a turner so everything is where you want it and there is nothing where you don't want it. I am lucky enough to own two of these - one is a portable unit for demonstration turning. Sadly David died recently, but his lathes stand as a testament to his skill and ability as a designer.

I also use a Tyme 'Little Gem' (from Craft Supplies, UK) for general tasks like bandsaw blade sharpening, as a mount for polishing wheels, drilling blanks, and many other sundry tasks. Its main advantages are its variable speed and very quiet running. For bobbin turning it is not ideal as the toolrest is rather poorly designed and the gap between the bed and the centre is very small. Still, a very useful machine, well engineered and excellent value for money.

What sort of tools do you use?

Many of the tools are made in the workshop, out of old high speed steel planet blades, or reground minature carving tools. Some turning tools are made for miniature work, and the ones made by Ashley Iles, a UK family toolmaker, are particularly good. I use their small gouges all the time. I make beading and parting tools out of chrome-molybdenum tool steel cutters sold for use on metal cutting lathes, and mount them in a handle so they can be replaced easily.

Bandsaw, scroll saw, radial arm saw, thicknesser, thickness sander, routers, dowel makers, peg cutters, specialised end boring machines (2), a host of jigs (some of them powered), disc and belt sanders, 3 lathes, drill presses, miniature sawbench (3''), mini drills, dust extraction equipment, assembly jigs, purfling cutters, and many other tools besides! Many of these items can be seen in the photos below, which show the workshop in a fairly typical state of organised chaos.

Many of the machines I use are potentially highly dangerous. Many woodworkers are missing a bit of a finger through a moment's loss of concentration with a bandsaw. However I had a serious accident in the workshop several years ago, about 1988, when one using one the most innocuous and 'safest' machines, a disc sander. A small cube of timber on the bench vibrated toward the rotating disc without me seeing it and hit the face of the disc. It flicked up at great speed striking me in the len of my spectacles, which were glass. They shattered filling my eye with broken glass fragments and blood. I was convinced I had lost the eye and in great shock and pain. Fortunately I was not alone at the time, and was driven to the hospital where a surgeon extracted all the glass very skilfully and amazingly no permanent damage was done to the eye, and I could see again with that eye after a day or two. I learned several things here: to have plastic lenses! and to respect even apparently 'safe' machines, and that it is really easy to have accidents, and that especially if people work for you, you MUST attend to these areas professionally. You have to it for your own sake too of course. That means insurance, supervision, training and a spacious safe workshop.

It suits my skills and equipment, and it provides an income! - and people appreciate what I produce. Not only thatv but it maintains a vital tradition and branch of human knowledge - that of the fine craft maker. This is one of the most important factors of all to me. It is hard work, and not well paid, but I can choose where I live, and live in fairly remote areas and sell via mail and the Internet. Bobbins are easy to send overseas via air mail. I have also invested a lot of time and money in equipment to make the job easier.

I turned my first bobbins in Norfolk, UK, in response to a request from a customer who knew I had a lathe and did some turning. This was 1982, and I was working as a cabinet maker and joiner in central Norfolk at the time. One thing leads to another, and the order led to repeat orders and lace days, eventually I decided to give up making other things to concentrate on bobbins.

I have three specialist supplier in Melbourne, Australia, going there means a trip on the car ferry from N. Tasmania. I deal with some suppliers in the UK, notably Craft Supplies in Derbyshire, and for local timbers in Tasmania I have two local dealers near here. Inlay materials, beads, adhesives, etc, I get from a wide variety of sources.

These days I use Super-Glue ('Hot Stuff' TM) widely in assembling and inlaying. For lamination, CIBA-Geigy's product 'Aerolite' is superb but unpleasant to work with. Selley's '308' is an acceptable substitute but harder to use successfully. Epoxy resins are needed to make secure joints between some materials. PVA based adhesives are problematic as they creep or fail due to the heat generated when sanding and polishing the bobbins, but for some non-critical tasks they are OK.

Time. 600 grit abrasive paper and don't hurry the finishing and polishing. Time is the most important ingredient! There are no short cuts to good wood finishing. I avoid lacquers (polyurethanes etc) like the plague, and make my own polish from shellac, linseed oil and metho (methylated spirit or ethanol).

The synthetic ivory I use in. e.g., design #81b, is (perhaps surprisingly) a man-made composite based on a kind of polyester resin. It is remarkably expensive but quite realistic when compared to the real thing. I am usually pretty sceptical about such products but gave this a go and I like it. It is too weak to make entire bobbins from unfortunately.

I won't use real ivory as I accept the argument that any trade in ivory leads to large scale illegal poaching in desperately poor African countries, threatening the survival of the species in many areas. Some claim that as one or two countries have too many elephants for the local ecosystem to support, and some have to be 'culled' (killed) then it's OK to sell ivory. This ignores the effect created by any legal market for ivory, which is to cause mass slaughter of elephants in the other countries where the species is not secure.

Yes. I teach by negotiation, anything from a one day workshop to a full week of residential tuition, on an individual basis.  I am also willing to do demonstration turning at shows, lace days and other events, and workshops at woodworking seminars etc. Please contact me if you are interested in workshops, residential courses etc. Residential courses are offered at my workshop in beautiful southern Tasmania, and accommodation can be arranged locally. Please book early to secure a place. More information here.

Yes - I have an illustrated talk on the modern practice of bobbin making as I do it which is accompanied by 80 colour slides. I am happy to give this talk to lace or woodworking groups.

I have in the past made furniture (18th C reproduction English Oak), fitted kitchens, staircases, doors windows, roofs, floors, conservatories, and musical instruments - specifically flat back bouzoukis. These are as used for Irish traditional music. Details of these:  Musical Instruments

All HTML script and images in this Web page copyright Malcolm Fielding 1997-2003