My videos as a production woodturner

[TONY MALIN]

I'm glad I asked the questions. The answers are really enlightening and much as I expected. Sandpapering apart! You must be very proud of your 300 year tradition.

The hobbiest is unlikely to experience such rigorous training.

However when I was learning and struggling with beads I was told to practice over and over again until I'd done 50 or was it 500?

I was quite successful with the skew from day one and instinctively realised it is basically planing. It was later on that I experienced spiralling.

I started turning ahead of my retirement in 1990. It has been a useful hobby with plenty of ups and downs. One of the worst that sticks in my mind was struggling with an ash bowl that was badly out of balance due to offset heartwood. I enjoy making mushrooms and my wife takes great pleasure in giving them away.

Thank you again.

[Steve Jones]

Tony,
Great to hear you practiced doing beads. It is practice that makes perfect the more you turn the more comfortable you feel
Being a professional I'm not so sure about giving mushrooms away

George like you I learnt using just four tools and was told that is all you need to do everything. We just love tools though. Tools have evolved and we buy them because they make the job easier but I think we have too many.

Tony 500 beads is not a lot the picture below shows 100 spindles I turned for a set in the BBC TV drama 'the secret of Crickley Hall' and that is 2,400 beads in one job.

[Mark Sanger]

Brilliant videos Steve, great to see a master at work. Thank you for sharing.

[Steve Jones]

Thank you Mark, a true complement coming from a woodturner as acomplished  as yourself.

[Richard Findley]

Hi Steve

I'm always interested to see how others do things - especially when they know what they're doing!

Nice to see another Wadkin still in regular use. What is yours, an RS8 or 10? I can't tell from the video. I confess to being a little envious of your 2 banjos and long metal tool rest. My wooden one is good but I'd love a second proper banjo and long rest.

Cheers

Richard

[Steve Jones]

Richard, I have the RS10 and love it. I had the long rest made by a local metal worker and have several of various lengths upto 54" would be lost without them.
I think your only chance of getting another banjo now is maybe on EBay.

[Richard Findley]

Hi Steve

Can't beat a Wadkin! I do periodically check ebay, but no luck yet!

All the best

Richard

[Bryan Milham]

I consider myself fairly well skilled with the skew, but I can see from your videos that I'm not to production speed or standards, maybe with another 20 years of practice...

[Steve Jones]

OK! last one for a while but I was looking at youtube and there are very few videos of a hand turned newel post so, as I make them all the time, I tried to video one. My phone has a small memory so I could not quite video it all, it cut of just at the end, sadly for me the most interesting part when I cut off with the lathe still running.
The video is at
https://youtu.be/MO9QpiEl4Io

The post was one of three for this particular job

[GBF]

Keep em coming Steve I could watch you all day and never get bored

Regards George