Jim Atkins

This past Thursday night I got to attend Louisville Area Woodturners' (LAW) monthly meeting. I don't get to attend very often since I live about 1 1/2 hours away. However, since I had a meeting that I needed to attend in Louisville on Friday morning, I took the opportunity to go to the turning club and spend the night with my parents. Jim Atkins from MO was our guest demonstrator for the night. You are probably not familiar with Jim's work, but he turns fairly good sized pieces and then does what he describes as a basket illusion on them.

During the demo I had the chance to wonder over to the display table where a couple of his pieces were on display. They are extremely intricate. I'm still not sure that I'll ever try one, but they are beautiful and fetch a fair price. At least Jim's do.

After turning the piece and sanding it fairly smooth, Jim begins the illusion process. There are a series of beads turned on both inside and outside. The idea is that the outside must mirror the inside in order to give the appearance of being a basket. Once the beads are turned, the real fun begins, the radial lines. Jim suggested starting with dividing the piece into 4. Each of the quadrants are then divided into 9 equal spaces. You now have lines that are 10 degrees apart. Each of those spaces are now divided into 5 equal spaces so that you now have the piece marked out with each line being only 2 degrees apart. Of course you cannot run these radial lines all the way to the center. They get to be too many lines too close together and would only create a blob for the next process.

That next process is to burn each of those radial lines. Jim makes his own burn tips in a Burn Master rig. Each radial line on each bead is burned in. Where a design is to be included using color, each little block that has now been created must be individually colored in a way that the color does not run into the next block. Other wise the pattern would be messed up.

Some one asked the question, "How much time to you have in that piece?" Jim was holding one of the examples of his work that he had brought with him. His reply, "Something like 40 hours" said with a shrug. I'm not sure how old Jim is, but maybe when I'm his age I'll have the patience that he has in order to do one of these pieces.



Both of these are of the same piece. Sorry about the quality, but they are both taken with my phone. Let me know what you think, please.