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(grinder buzzing)
- A lot of people don't know what woodturning is.
(chuckles)
(lathe buzzing)
Woodturning has been around for a long time,
is actually I think slightly different from flatwork.
(lathe buzzing)
There's a certain misconception that you have to be
really strong and muscular.
(lathe buzzing)
Woodturning is more about finesse than anything,
and really having the feel of the cut,
more than strength.
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(lathe buzzing)
So, the first thing that I'm gonna do is
choose the pieces of wood that I wanna make bowls out of,
starting with a log.
I would chainsaw it into a slab.
(chainsaw buzzing)
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I'm actually making quite a lot of decisions
about the final piece with the chainsaw.
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(chainsaw buzzing)
How the grain is gonna run through the piece,
how balanced it's gonna be,
how tall the piece is gonna be,
how wide it's gonna be.
All those things are happening with the chainsaw.
(chain saw buzzing)
I've got two nice chunks here.
This log was actually sitting in my yard for a few weeks.
So, there's some really cool striations,
some cool coloring in here.
I'm just gonna mark out where the circle's gonna be.
(chainsaw buzzing)
I'll cut off the sides of it with the chainsaw,
basically as much weight as I can remove as possible
to make it easier for me to handle the piece
before I put it on the bandsaw.
(chainsaw buzzing)
Woodturning is a process of making wood round.
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Turning I would say, is more about feel.
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It's more about creating a pleasing curve.
Now, that's the simplest definition of what woodturning is.
(table saw buzzing)
Then when a tree is first taken down, it's full of water.
As it starts to dry, it's gonna start to crack.
So, ideally, I'm gonna be able to start working with it
as quickly as possible after the trees are taken down.
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The wood that I use to make my bowls
is all locally-salvaged wood.
I'm able to get the wood and then give it a new life.
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I don't do anything with straight lines and right angles.
I hate measuring stuff.
I like flowing forms or organic shapes
as opposed to angular ones.
(knocks)
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The first step is to put the piece
on the lathe, what's called between centers.
So, it's just being held between two points.
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A lathe is my primary tool.
It's a machine that spins wood around really fast,
and I cut it and shape it while it's spinning.
It's bolted to the floor.
It's not going anywhere.
(laughs)
(lathe grinding)
Rough turning is a way of taking a chunk of wood
from a round slab, and then turning it into a bowl shape.
(lathe grinding)
I studied art in school.
I studied sculpture and installation art.
I knew that I wanted to make a living,
making things with my hands,
but I didn't know exactly what direction I was gonna go in.
(lathe grinding)
The first year was a struggle.
There were lots of days I would go to the farmer's market,
and not sell anything and still have to pay rent.
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And I kept at it.
I met this guy whose name is Stuart Batty.
He grew up turning in the trade in England.
So, he learned woodturning from his dad
who learned it from his dad.
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♪ Jump my soul ♪
I would say, after working with him
and having that apprenticeship,
I really learned how to turn.
(lathe buzzing)
You can think of a tree like it's a big bundle of straws
that's carrying all the nutrients in the water
up from the soil.
(lathe buzzing)
Those straws, the grain of the wood is full of water.
It's gonna be really heavy.
It's gonna be wet.
When you first put the wood on the lathe,
it's gonna be spraying water everywhere as it's spinning.
(lathe buzzing)
Oh, gosh, what can go wrong?
I'd say pretty much every stage of the process is dangerous
if you don't have the piece of wood
securely mounted on the lathe, it can fly off,
and it could potentially hit you and cause a lot of damage.
(laughing)
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(metals clanking)
Sharpening my tools is something that I do every day,
multiple times a day.
(grinder buzzing)
When I'm working on my production work,
I don't turn the grinder off
because I have to sharpen so frequently.
It doesn't take very long
for me to turn three miles of wood
as that lathe is spinning,
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I'll hollow out the inside of the bowl,
making sure to leave enough thickness.
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Wood is a living thing.
(laughs)
It's constantly moving.
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What happens as the wood is gaining or losing moisture?
So, when I first get the wood that I work with
for making bowls, and it's full of moisture,
it's going to move quite a bit,
and as it loses that moisture, it's gonna change shape.
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But when I'm turning, I have to account for that.
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After that piece of wood is done drying,
I turn it into a bowl shape.
There's a certain thickness that I'm aiming for
all throughout, so that I'm gonna be able to still get
a nice, perfectly round, pretty bowl at the end of the day.
I like to mark what kind of wood it is,
and the date that I've turned it on the outside in pencil.
I would wax the entire surface of the bowl.
I wanna try and slow down the drying process
in order to minimize cracking in the wood as it dries.
The wax helps me to maintain an equilibrium
of the moisture content throughout the piece of wood
as the wood is drying.
It's the coating on the outside of the wood
that will allow some moisture to escape slowly
over a prolonged period of time,
and create more of that equilibrium
within the piece of wood.
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So, once it gets to that stage,
then it's a matter of waiting
for a really, really long time.
A wooden bowl is going to take several months to a year
at least, to dry before it's ready for finished turning.
You can see this one was rough turned in 2010.
This is a live Oak.
So, this one here, I feel like is a really good example of
just how much the wood moves as it dries.
You can see though over time how it's moved,
how it's elongated.
If you look at the rim,
the part where the center of the tree was,
is usually going to come up as it dries,
and the sides tend to go down.
In the drying process, the first few months,
I would say the first three or four months
are gonna be sort of, the crucial time period.
Within that period, the wood is gonna do
most of it's moving, most of it's changing shape,
and I really need to check on the bowls
probably every three to four days,
and make sure I don't see any cracks starting to form.
If cracks do start to form,
ideally, I wanna catch them as quickly as possible.
And I'm just gonna put a little bit of glue in there
to keep them from spreading.
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(metals clanking)
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Having a mentor,
having somebody to learn the techniques from
was crucial for me.
Before I started that apprenticeship, I was struggling.
I was using way too much muscle and way too much force.
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I would not have lasted as a wood turner
had I not learned a good set of techniques.
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I think it just makes sense to learn from somebody,
to seek out somebody who you respect and admire
in the field,
somebody who you think does good work,
and try and learn from them however you can.
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I like to create shapes in wood turning
that almost look like they were additive
when in fact they were subtractive.
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The bowls that I make
generally don't have a very rustic look.
I like to get a really nice finish on my bowls,
and I like them to be crisp and sharp.
I like it to be obvious that they're intentional,
and that the artist meant for them to be there.
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Woodturning, my dad calls it "male, pale, and stale."
(chuckles)
It's, you know, it's generally a lot of older white men.
When I got started, I think there was maybe
two to three percent of the membership
of the American Association of Woodturners was female.
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A big reason that there isn't as much diversity
in woodturning is because people don't see diversity.
It's one of those like, chicken and egg kind of things.
So, I would say that the more women
start to come to the forefront of wood turning,
the more it's going to start to diversify.
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Once the bowl has been completely turned and sanded,
then it's time to apply a finish.
I like a finish that's very simple,
that's easy to apply, and it's food safe.
I'm not really using any type of coloring or stain.
I'm really just relying on the natural color
and the natural tones of the wood.
I like to keep them simple and straightforward.
I would say it doesn't take a whole lot to learn
how to make a piece of wood round.
I would say the skill comes in learning
all of the different nuance techniques,
(lathe buzzing)
the sharpening, and the stance,
and the way you hold the tool,
and where the force comes from,
and all these different types of little things
wrapped up together.
It takes lots of practice.
It takes lots of time.
But once you put in that practice and that time,
you can get a cut that's almost flawless
straight off the couch.
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