4 Hours of a Broken Record

I made a video on turning some years ago with Lost Art Press that turned out to be about 4 hours long. Chris would have been fine if it was longer or shorter, but I honestly showed just about everything I know about turning in 4 hours. I’m teaching day two of a two day turning intensive today, which is just about the right amount of time. I have 4 hours of knowledge and the students go lathe blind after about 6 hours of turning. I begin the class by introducing the refrain they will hear from me throughout the class. It’s a simple idea, “You’re standing in the wrong place”.

I can talk about specific tools and motions, but it’s all meaningless if you aren’t in a position to move correctly. Most of the important movement comes from the legs. Why is body position such a big deal? I mean you bought the right tool and it’s razor sharp. Pretend to write a sentence across a page. Notice how you move your hand evenly and smoothly to a position where your fingers can make the dexterous motions to form each letter. Imagine if you didn’t move your hand but left it at the beginning of the sentence and reached with the pencil, slowly and perfectly extending it as you formed the letters. That’s how most beginners turn, trying to compensate for a poor body position by constant compensation as they make their way through a shape.

When I am turning well, it feels like the piece is sliding past me while I focus on subtle motions and adjustments. It’s very physical and mostly in the legs. A new set of muscles develop to keep you steady below the lathe as you glide along the workpiece. The rule of thumb I use for positioning myself in the right spot is to get comfortable standing near the end of any cut that I plan on taking, then I shift my body back to the beginning of the cut with my feet still planted.

It will be awkward and uncomfortable…good.

Then your body already knows where to go and you will become more comfortable and balanced as the cut proceeds. The other (bad) option is to get comfortable at the beginning of the cut and to become more unbalanced and awkward as you proceed. Your body knows when it is balanced and will return to it naturally if you are sober.

This goes for the hand position as well. If I start with my hands perfectly comfortable, why would I move them? Instead, I position the tool as it will be at the end of the cut, grip the tool comfortably and then contort myself to start the cut. As my wrists unwind to the comfortable position the tool follows the intended path. The lathe is far more rhythmic and athletic than you might expect. I can’t dance, but the lathe is as close as I get. It takes practice, but you can make a surprising amount of progress in a short period. I’ve found the key to long term progress is short sessions where you make only shavings and mistakes.

Beyond body movement, I focus on practice techniques and timing. The problem with most folks interaction with turning is that they only do it when they need a part for a piece of furniture. The pressure is on. Yes, with a lot of scraping and sanding, you can get the job done and learn to look with mild disdain at the lathe. Squeaking out a few parts over many hours won’t teach you to turn consistently nearly as fast as cranking out some crappy turnings for 5 minutes, five days in a row. When turning parts for furniture or one perfect leg or many hours, you are focussed on the result, not the process. Imagine learning to drive this way. Would you put a 15 year old kid in a car and say, “If you make it to the grocery store, then you know how to drive”. Learning to intuit all the positions and movements takes many short sessions with time inbetween, otherwise the stress of learning gives diminishing results

.

So I’ve got a busy day ahead of me. About 2 more hours of demonstration and lots of walking around the shop telling people that they are standing in the wrong spot.