Took the Class
My Dad and I attended the Fundamentals of Wood turning on Sunday. We had a great time. I think my Dad will be visiting me more often, well maybe not me, but my shop anyways..... (he doesn't have a lathe yet)
All I can say is that my little Jet Lathe is 10 times cooler now that I took the class!
The instructor was Kurt Hertzog, a fairly well known wood turner in Western New York. He did a great job.
He did a fairly extensive session on sharpening, and helped me get a better bevel on my roughing gouge. He also helped with the ears on my 3/8 bowl gouge. Really the class was worth going to just for the sharpening.
Fortunately for me I have only been playing with the lathe for less than a month, so I don't have any bad habits that I have to unlearn.
We turned cherry blanks, not into any thing specific, but to work on the techniques he had showed us. After seeing it up close and trying it myself, the idea of "rubbing the bevel" makes alot more sense to me now.
We also turned some green wood, that was just cut that morning. That was a ton of fun! Curly wet ribbons everywhere! Kinda makes me want to go out and cut down a tree.......
When I got home that night, I practiced some sharpening and turned more of the green blanks that he let us take home.
For anyone that is interested in turning, I recommend a class. There is no way that I could have learned what I did there, on my own.
This is Kurt's site if anyone is interested:
http://www.kurthertzog.com/index.htm