Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist and a columnist for the New York Times, in 2003 exposed a similar situation to that of woodturning teaching when writing about of all subjects English food: “a free-market economy can get trapped for an extended period in a bad equilibrium in which good things are not demanded because they have never been supplied, and are not supplied because not enough people demand them”.8
A related problem is that a considerable proportion of beginners don’t seek formal tuition. Instead they’re self-taught and/or are taught inferior techniques by a well-meaning person. This of course lessens the demand for, and therefore the supply of, quality teaching of the full range of turning techniques.
I have recently taught a class of typical amateurs: in their 50s and 60s, been turning for several years, sold a few turnings at markets, and in my opinion with little idea of how to perform even the basic cuts surely and efficiently. But by focussing on turning one-offs, avoiding difficult cuts, and using excessive sanding they were able to produce turnings which were admired. Their reaction to the tuition was revelatory: new potential opened up, confidence was gained. However this was accompanied by the realisation that most of their earlier turning experience had been a waste.
1.2.7 Design
You should design before you turn. To many turners design is an alien and onerous practice. They therefore favor non-useful turning in which informal designing as you turn is common even though wood which has been undesirably cut away can’t be restored to its former state.
Design is the important input—the turning should be the easy part you do at the end. But if your turning technique is poor, you’ll tend to neglect designing—why bother with it when you’re unlikely to be able to turn what you might design? However once you are a competent turner, the quality of your design greatly influences the quality of your turning output. For example the new gate-post finial in the foreground of figure 1.5 has been competently turned (on an automatic lathe), but is of uninspired design.
A misconception which favors the non-useful is that designing useful turnings is less creative than designing non-useful. Useful-turning design can be more demanding because it is constrained by the need to satisfy use in addition to other objectives. And usefulness is not incompatible with design excellence or beauty.
It’s true that many hand turners like to produce ornament. I absolutely agree that the ornament of many of this book’s projects is historic in style. But once a design, a style or a design feature is invented, it instantly becomes historical. Is it important whether the invention occurred a day, a year, a century, or a millennium ago? Many of the notable wooden bowls and vessels turned in recent decades have forms resembling examples produced in antiquity in other materials, but this doesn’t seem to be regarded adversely.
The reality of design
It’s sad but true that we aren’t all created equal. Most of us don’t have the high innate artistry needed to design pieces of conspicuous originality and merit. Thus artifice and plagiarism are a feature of some non-useful turnings. In contrast, a useful turning may resemble earlier examples, may have to if usefulness is to be retained, but because it is not attempting to be original, accusations of plagiarism are much less likely, relevant or important.
Even copying, unless absolute exactness is specified, can be an exciting design challenge. A tweak here, a millimeter there, can transform a stolid design into one which has life.
1.2.8 The demand for useful turnings
An important factor which I have so far ignored is that the potential demand for useful turnings is far greater than that for non-useful, and could be better exploited.
For most turners sales are of no or little importance; they keep their turnings or give them away. My experience is that most recipients of free turnings would prefer that they were useful. And even if that use is nominal or obscure, it adds an extra dimension of interest.
Look around the homes of non-turners and compare the number of useful turnings with the number of non-useful. I venture that you’ll usually find that the former is considerably greater. It’s true that the market for useful turnings has declined, in part because of the substitution of man-made materials for wood and the replacement of hand turning by cheaper processes. Therefore a hand-turned item is now a luxury object irrespective of whether it’s useful or not, and its design and making should complement that reality.
Many live and/or work in buildings bereft of aesthetic merit whose rooms before furnishing have all the visual interest of the inside of a cardboard box. Hence the desire to compensate by furnishing with posters, pictures, ornaments, etc. This creates an opportunity for woodturners. A useful turning, even something as mundane as chapter 3’s backscratcher, can become an object of comfort and affection.
1.3 CONCLUSION
My contention that turners would benefit from increasing their proportion of useful output is against the trend, but is it ill-founded? If you’re an amateur turner, you should treat turning how you want to. If you want to treat it as an occasional pastime, that’s fine. But to gain real enjoyment you’ll need to commit. That doesn’t preclude you turning what you want to: it facilitates it. But, as I hope the above has shown, that choice has likely been influenced by factors that you may not have been conscious of. I hope that this book will tempt you to consider increasing your useful output and, if necessary, increasing the range and depth of your turning skills and your interest in design.
1.4 GENERAL MATTERS
This book assumes that you’re familiar with the basic woodturning techniques. It therefore repeats little content from my earlier woodturning books, but does explain techniques which are out of the ordinary and particular to a project. I have provided dimensioned scale drawings of the projects, usually in the form of pencil gauges. I don’t claim copyright on any of my designs for this book. You’re therefore free to copy, modify, or scale them. If you do, it wouldn’t belittle you to mention the source.
Many readers will, like me, have drills with imperial and metric diameters. However for woodturners millimeters are a far more convenient unit of measurement than inches. Therefore unless it’s appropriate to use a drill with an imperial diameter, I’ll usually dimension drill and hole diameters in millimeters, and you can instead choose to use a drill with a close imperial diameter. Note that a greater range of drill diameters are available from specialist engineering suppliers than from most hardware shops. I’ve also assumed that axial holes in turnings will be bored in the lathe.
The range of possible chucks and chucking procedures can be large even for simple turnings, and will be influenced by the equipment the turner can readily access. I have not attempted to explain all the chucking and sequence choices for a particular situation.
I use the terms polish and polishing for operations such as sealing, painting, varnishing, lacquering, oiling and/or waxing together with any associated sanding which are applied to the wood to enhance appearance and/or provide protection. When producing a turning, I often call the last turning operation on a workpiece finish-turning, a term introduced by Peter Child.9 This term includes any appropriate sanding. Thus finish-turning precedes, but does not include any polishing.
I’ve usually