Lathe Turning in Dholka

I spent the day on Sunday with Anil, a lathe turner as I watched him 15 pieces on his traditional lathe.

Anil has been turning all his life, his father was also a turner and his 13-year-old son also plans to be a turner. 

Anil turning a chair leg

The lathe; Western style lathe turning is done standing up, in India, it is done sitting down. Often the feet are also used in the process, whether to help press sandpaper or lacquer stick against the piece, holding the piece in tension between the lathe centers, or even guiding the tools when shaping the wood. When turning a spindle on a western style lathe, one end has teeth in it that grabs the piece and spins the piece driven by an electric motor. On an Indian style lathe, a notch is turned and a rope belt is put into that notch and it runs off a motor mounted in the rafters above your head. These are the primary differences. The tools are more limited but similar.

Tools, only gouges & scrapers all made by a blacksmith

Making pieces

A pretty cool video does a nice job explaining some of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsTC_4B7V70

Traditional powerless lathe turning is a real thing to see here but is becoming much less common. 

Traditional turner in Kutch

 I have decided to really focus on a specific craft tradition – lathe turning, though some other craft forms will show up in the finished work. I am using reclaimed materials, principally Burmese Teak and (for those who are curious) I am paying $2 to $3 a board foot for it. I actually buy by the kilogram and I am paying 70 to 100 rupees per kilo. It is a beautiful hard wood that is brutal on tools but very dry and very stable and I am really happy about reusing old wood.

These pieces will be are a combination of digital fabrication and traditional craft. For example, I have designed a chair that will have a seat digitally fabricated on a CNC router with legs turned by Anil. I will post images as soon they exist. I am also working with a “ digital guy” Rudrapalsinh – RP to those of us who really suck at Indian pronunciations. He is modeling my pieces in Rhino and doing the files for the CNC machines.

Design - piece

Back to turning; In about 6 hours Anil turned 15 pieces, 4 chair legs, 2 tall pedestal legs (the bases will be carved stone) legs for a 3 legged pedestal, 4 table legs and some pieces for the back support on a second chair design.

The really special thing (I think) about Gujaratti turning is the use of lac sticks. In a nutshell sticks of color (imagine very hard crayons) are made by Anil and his apprentices and through the heat created by pressing the sticks against the spindles while it is turning, the coloured lacquer is deposited on the piece. A very cool process that I shot a lot of video of and the next day discovered that my camera for some unknown reason saved none of it.

Lacquer work

Finished pieces

This is just the first round. The plan is to have another set of turnings made for numerous pieces that will become part of my final exhibition. Then have more made to bring home with me so that I might produce some prototypes in the states.

Neighbors

Architectural Salvage

Got out of the city today and headed south. Visited what we would call an architectural salvage place and a town that has a bunch of lathe turners and just returned about an hour ago. e last blog I did had a bunch of me blathering on, so this one I’m just going to post a bunch of pics. It was an awesome day and yes dear I did buy a few things. But don’t worry, I bought nothing bigger than a fufu pounder.

A couple of things first this guy was a collector/ hoarder of chests and larders – what was/ is used in place of a fridge. My colleague and friend Samruda had to document one of the larders for the project they are working on at DICRC. Most of this stuff is 70 to 100+ years old, some even older. I just found it really interesting – one mans junk… Most these pieces are totally hand made so all the carving you see is done by hand. So I am surprised that these things would be left to spoil. Flippin’ amazing!!

If I had a nickel for every one of these scenes - Water buffalo

Sam and his larder

Architectural slavage, all hand carved

Hand raised brass, the entire front tells a story

Chests & more Chests

Lots of horse motifs

Chris doing lacquerware, a teaser for the next blog...

Adjusting: Finding a place to live

It is always interesting to observe how another culture deals with day-to-day activities. I am always fascinated and sometimes often frustrated by how another culture operates and it reminds me about the simple things that we as Americans really take for granted.

What I spent the first couple weeks doing was looking for a place to live (in between all the holidays):

I looked at several options from dumpy little dark sad places to a large sparkling penthouse flat on the twelfth floor of a new tower that overlooked the city with a slum in the foreground. They were asking 35,000 rupees per month for this, that is around $530 and I could have taken it but it would have been so out of touch with reality here. I also looked at a place that was entirely outfitted with led lighting the changed from clear to green to red to blue and back again. I have also NEVER seen so many light switches! I was concerned that I would have had seizures there. I really should have taken pictures of these places.

My search was not easy principally because of the time issue. I am only here for four and a half months, and as in the US, most landlords are looking to lease their places for a year. So we continued to look when we heard that there was a researcher here preparing to leave for a six-month residency at UC Berkley and was looking to sublease her place. Perfect! I looked at it, I agreed to take it, and the next day backed out of it and I felt awful about it. Why? A lot of issues started to pop up, I was a bachelor (yes I am married but I would be living here single most of the time) I might be prone to cooking meat, a no no in this complex, and the biggest red flag, I was a foreigner. This particular apartment is in a “society” and this particular society was apparently pretty darned conservative. You could compare it to a gated community but societies are big apartment complexes as apposed to houses. I first thought I would just do my best to stay under the radar, to “blend”, but, well I’m kinda tall, kinda white, and I kinda stand out… a lot, particularly here, and I just did not want to deal with the issues that (probably wouldn’t have but might arise. I really am living the fish bowl existence enough already and at some point in my daily life, I would like to not be the center of attention, it is simply exhausting. I do have to say when I am on the CEPT campus I do not garner too much attention. But when I am out and about, shopping, everyone wants to know what it in the white guy’s basket, and I have never been so intently stared at like I am here. I was stuck in traffic a couple of days ago, I looked out the left side of the rickshaw and there is a guy on a scooter staring at me. We make eye contact and he doesn’t look away. I look right and here is a family of three on a motorcycle all staring at me, they don’t look away either. I look left again, still staring, look right, also still staring. The only thing that ends this is when traffic begins to move.

Bathroom

 To make the long story about housing short, we ended up finding a guest bungalow on Air B&B where I am in one of three rooms. It is on a side street just across from the railroad tracks and walking distance to a whole lot of stuff including groceries, veggie stands, and restaurants, There is also a beautiful public garden, and a nice street market within walking distance. I have a room with an attached bath that doubles as a shower room and a toilet. I share a kitchen, though most of the time I will have it to myself. My landlady and housekeeper are both very cool.

Bedroom/ livingroom/ familyroom/ office

All in all I feel pretty good about my living situation and I am adjusting relatively well. Though I really need to start making stuff and formally interacting with classes. Apparently I need to take the initiative to make both these happen; I will need to invite myself into the classes to do presentations and I am set to travel to a village to visit some lathe turners tomorrow morning.

The Veranda

Kitchen