a lot of people don't know what woodturning is woodturning has been around for a long time it's actually completely different from flat work [Music] there's a certain misconception that you have to be really strong and muscular woodturning is more about finesse than anything and really having the feel of the cut more than strength so the first thing that i'm going to do is choose the pieces of wood that i want to make bowls out of starting with a log i would chainsaw it into a slab [Music] i'm actually making quite a lot of decisions about the final piece with the chainsaw how the grain is going to run through the piece how balanced it's going to be how tall the piece is going to be how wide it's going to be all those things are happening with the chainsaw 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 going to mark out where the circle is going to be [Music] 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 woodturning is a process of making wood round turning i would say is more about feel it's more about creating a pleasing curve that's the simplest definition of what woodturning is so when a tree is first taken down it's full of water as it starts to dry it's going to start to crack so ideally i'm going to be able to start working with it as quickly as possible after the trees are taken down 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 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 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 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 rough turning is a way of taking a chunk of wood from a round slab and then turning it into a bowl shape 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 going to go in 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 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 i would say after working with him and having that apprenticeship i really learned how to turn you can think of a tree like it's a big bundle of straws that's carrying all the nutrients and the water up from the soil those straws the grain of the wood is full of water it's going to be really heavy it's going to be wet when you first put the wood on the lathe it's going to be spraying water everywhere as it's spinning 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 a lathe it can fly off and it could potentially hit you and cause a lot of damage [Music] sharpening my tools is something that i do every day multiple times a day 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 through miles of wood as that lathe is spinning [Music] i'll hollow out the inside of the bowl making sure to leave enough thickness [Music] wood is a living thing it's constantly moving 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 going to change shape but when i'm turning i have to account for that 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 going to 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 and pencil i would wax the entire surface of the bowl i want to 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 a 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 [Music] so once it gets to that stage then it's a matter of waiting for a really really long time wooden bowl is going to take several months to a year at least to dry before it's ready for finish 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 going to be sort of the crucial time period within that period the wood is going to do most of its moving most of its 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 want to catch them as quickly as possible and i'm just going to put a little bit of glue in there to keep them from spreading 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 i would not have lasted as a woodturner had i not learned a good set of techniques 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 [Music] i like to create shapes in wood turning that almost look like they were additive when in fact they're subtractive the bowls that i make generally don't have a very rustic look i like to get a really nice finish on my bowls i like them to be crisp and sharp i like it to be obvious that they're intentional that the artist meant for them to be there woodturning my dad calls it male pale and stale 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 [Music] 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 woodturning the more it's going to start to diversify 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 around i would say the skill comes in learning all of the different nuanced techniques the sharpening and the stance and the way you hold the tool and where the force comes from and all those 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 in that time you can get a cut that's almost flawless straight off the gouge