Author Archives: Laurent

Announcement

Posted by Laurent

I am excited to announce that I am now a Permanent Resident of the United States and I will be living and working in Fort Collins, Colorado USA.

It is good news for clubs and individuals across the US, because it means I will be able to teach and demonstrate anywhere in the US all year round. I am currently scheduling In-Person & Remote Demos as well as hands on classes for both 2022 and beyond. Visit my demonstration page to learn more. I am still available for remote demonstrations if your club is not meeting in person, and have an even higher quality set up than before.

I am looking forward to see more of this beautiful country while visiting your club.

If you are not in the US, no worries, I am still offering remote demos for international clubs!

NEW! Laurent Niclot Mini Hollowers

Posted by Laurent

I am very excited to present these new hollowing tools that I designed for miniature hollow forms. These 3/16″ Mini Tools are made out of High Speed Steel and the 3/8″ shank can fit in any standard 3/8″ handle.

With these tools you can hollow pieces up to 2.5 inches deep and 2 inches wide.

These tools are exclusively distributed through Trent Bosch Studios Inc.

Check out my NEW! Niclot Mini Hollowers here!

Juicy

Posted by Laurent

This piece was made in collaboration with Dixie Biggs from Gainesville, Florida. It is the latest interpretation of the Ploc series. I turned and carved the shape of the drop using the lathe, gouges and rasps, and made the carton and carved it with the woodburner. Then the piece was sent to Dixie who created the recess in the drop and textured it with powertools to create the orange peel texture and the fruit in the recess. She also did all the painting on the drop and the carton using acrylic paints. This piece is still available if you are interested.

Materials : Maple, Acrylic paints

Dimensions :

  • Height 3 3/4”
  • Width 2 3/4”
  • Length 4 1/2”

If you are interested to learn more about Dixie and her amazing work, go check out her website!

Visit her website

MeTeaOr

Posted by Laurent

This piece from the Ploc! series is made out of basswood for the drop and ash for the miniature teapot. The teapot is turned, hollowed, sandblasted, dyed with Indian ink and gilding wax. The handle is made out of wire wrapped with a cotton string and dyed the same way. The drop is turned and turned in multi-axis, then carved using gouges and rasps, and textures using the woodburner. The color is given by drybrushing multiple layers of acrylic paints over an Indian ink first coat.

Dimensions :

  • Height 3 17/32”
  • Width 2”
  • Length 3 17/32”

Coloring and Illusions

Posted by Laurent

In this demonstration I will show you how to color the textures that I made in the previous demo: Texturing with the Woodburner to make them look real and as close as possible to the material we are trying to copy. I will use the dry brushing technique, with Indian ink and acrylic paints and show you the process of creating a gradient of colors. I will also show you how to use gilding wax and chroma gilt to create metallic effects and damascus texture. Those techniques can be applied on a lot of different textures, like on carved textures but also on sandblasted wood, wire brushed wood or burned wood. I will talk about the colors and how to decide which one to use or not and what the common mistakes are and how to avoid them, or correct them.

It will be an interactive remote demonstration, you will be able to comment and ask questions directly to me, or in the chat. It will be on November 5th, at 9am Mountain Time.

I hope to see you there !

Register for the demonstration
Check out the woodburning demo

Texturing with a woodburner

Posted by Laurent

In this demonstration, I will show you how to use the woodburner as a carving tool, using a sharp blade to create different textures, patterns and designs. We will talk about the material, the wood and the different tips and pens. I am going to carve a steampunk design to show you the 3 main techniques that combined create the illusion of a different material. Then I will show you different textures, including but not limited to interlacing, stone wall, hammered metal, burned earth… and finally, I will show you how to make your own tips and sharpen them.

If you already attended my first demonstration on the woodburning, you can still register for this one, I will go further and show you more textures, leaving the coloring for a second demonstration on November 5th. This will allow me to give you more details, and show you some new textures I have been working on.

It will be an interactive remote demonstration, you will be able to comment and ask questions directly to me, or in the chat. It will be on October 27th, at 9am Mountain Time.

I hope to see you there !

Register for the demonstration
Check out the linked demo

Woodturners Worldwide online symposium

Posted by Laurent

I am so proud and so excited to announce the opening of the Woodturners Worlwide online symposium! The early bird special will be up until August 7th and if you use the code “Laurent”, you will get $10 off! I will be doing two demonstrations, the first one will be the miniature teapot, how to turn, hollow, texture and color it with gilding wax to create the damascus texture. My second demo will be an introduction to using the woodburner as a carving tool, creating a steampunk design, hammered metal, and other textures. The rest of the cast is amazing and I am so pleased to be in such a great company of woodturners and artists!

Register here!

Plouf! #2

Posted by Laurent

The Plouf! are a series of pieces inspired by the Ploc! They are inspired by Alice in wonderland and Aladin. The first Ploc! were made for an exhibition of the POP (professional outreach program) on the theme ‘classical form revisited ». I decided to revisit the teapot, keeping a classical shape but changing the scale, making them much smaller and have the drop of tea as a base, coming out of the spout. The first Ploufs werecreated with a teapot the size of a traditionnal Chineese teapot for 1 person (2″ in diameter) and the drop enlarged as well. The second Ploufs! had miniature teapots stacked like a teatree, making them more whimsical. The teapots are made out of ash, sandblasted, dyed with Indian ink and gilding wax. The handles are made out of wires wrapped with a coton string. The drops are made out of several woods like cypress or wild cherry, and with different finish, natural, burnt, painted with acrylics or gilded with a gilding wax.

Dimensions :

  • Height 9”
  • Length 7”
  • Diameter of the drop 4 5/16″
  • Diameter of the teapots roughly 1″

The Ploc! Interactive Remote demo

Posted by Laurent

I have been asked recently by Trent Bosch to do demonstrations remotly from my workshop in France, adapting our work to the current situation. Since the beginning of this crisis, I did several demonstrations for his website (virtual woodturning demos) and also for local clubs in America. I have refined the equipments and found a good balance between easy to use and pleasant to watch. This demo will be live on August 4th at 9am Mountain time and it will be on the making of a drop, it will be a demo on its own, but if you are interested, it can be linked with the teapot demonstration on July 21st. Combining those two demonstrations will show you how to make one of my signature piece, the Ploc! If you cannot attend one of the demos, you can check them out later in the archived demonstrations section of the virtual woodturning demos website.

In this demonstration, I will show you how to turn and turn off-center a drop using a spindle gouge and a skew. Then I will be carving the top of the drop using gouges and rasps to make it thinner and have two different curves on the back and the front giving it an illusion of movement. And finally, I will be texturing the drop using a woodburner to create a Steampunk design, a combination of gears and metal plates, and coloring using Indian ink and gilding wax.

For more informations and to register, go check out Virtual Woodturning Demos website :

Virtual Woodturning Demos

To check out the articles related to the teapots and the Ploc!s, click here :

Teapots