Unusual ashem style rounders

[johnnyb]

I've just got some Fred lambert rounders. I can never resist these and there I'm great nick.
There not the normal ones or even the Griffin ones but some that look to predate those styles a bit. Anyone seen the sort? Maybe they were cut down to work on a lathe/stail engine.
Even the wooden ones are beautifully made having brass inserts at the exit.

 

[johnnyb]

Maybe one for sgian dubh? Who met the man I believe.

 

[Sgian Dubh]

Maybe one for sgian dubh? Who met the man I believe.

I don't believe I met him, so not a question specifically for me I'd say. However, the rounders look like ones I used some forty plus years ago that came from a guy whose name I forget, but he was based somewhere in Wales. The ones in the pictures certainly don't look unusual to me, but maybe I'm mistaken. Slainte.

 

[johnnyb]

Oh sorry . The ashem rounders are unmistakable having ashem cast in the body. I know Fred regularly cast these on courses but I'd never come across any. The record spokeshave bits look to be from the seventies a151 stamped on them. I do love the slightly rustic but solid feel. Griffin made them for a while but those are slightly cleaner and less homespun although in essence the same.
There remarkable in rarely requiring honing. I guess peeling is easy on steel.

 

[johnnyb]

There probably best at putting a tenon on having a tightly controlled and bushed exit hole. Whole components can be a bit bent and have lines on but they do work if your not fussed about slightly rustic.

 

[johnnyb]

My own feeling is rustic is very lacking in the world!

 

[Sgian Dubh]

Oh sorry . The ashem rounders are unmistakable having ashem cast in the body. I know Fred regularly cast these on courses but I'd never come across any. The record spokeshave bits look to be from the seventies a151 stamped on them. I do love the slightly rustic but solid feel. Griffin made them for a while but those are slightly cleaner and less homespun although in essence the same.
There remarkable in rarely requiring honing. I guess peeling is easy on steel.

The rounders I used were supplied by the guy I mentioned for a four or five day long course he ran at the college where I studied for my furniture making C&G qualifications nearly fifty years ago. I don't remember the teacher's name but I know he ran courses up and down the country and he took lots of his rounders around with him, including the rounding engine plus trap versions of rounders - the trap was used to make tapered spindles. I knocked out a chair in his classes which was enjoyable and educational. He also demonstrated and taught learners how to cast the rounder bodies and set them up with bushes and spokeshave mechanisms. A few of my fellow learners made rounders; I wasn't one of them. Maybe this teacher was the Fred Lambert you mention, and if it was he was based in Wales somewhere. It's so long ago I can't recall details about the man I met.

As I said in my first post, the rounders you showed looked very much like the ones I used all those years ago. It didn't strike me as special that the name Ashem was cast into the rounder body, but that's probably because that particular field or method of chairmaking isn't an interest I've pursued, studied, or practiced since having a bit of a go at it and making a chair away back in the mists of time. Slainte.

 

[johnnyb]

If he was casting rounders it was almost certainly Fred lambert.
Peter hindle ran ashem crafts who then took up the rounder baton. And still making them up until a few years ago. They are and were quite expensive which ends up as a big problem when selling to hobby workers. They are not common in fact outside of the chairmaking sizes like hens teeth.
There so obviously a little cul de sac of toolmaking that they can not garner much attention but to me they speak of the swell of interest and the rediscovery of rural crafts in general that the 1970s and 80s saw.