Woodturning

 

Woodturning as a hobby has much to commend itself to amateur but enthusiastic people. 

 

There is however probably only room in the world for a certain number of bowls and once you have given one each of your family, friends and neighbours then you can run out of reasons to turn more unless of course you give them away for sale at charity events.  

 

You can mix this aspect of working with wood with more general woodworking or carpentry. Many of the tools and workshop equipment are common and you often need to resort to a wider range of tools than pure woodturning ones.

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 It is relatively easy to produce a useful item in an afternoon or two without a great deal of effort; the skills involved do develop over time. 

 

There are hazards as with many practical pursuits. Apart from the normal hazards present in any workshop, it is particularly important to consider the dust involved and invest in some decent quality extraction systems. You cannot really beat good personal dust masks - at least to P2 standards. Some wood dusts are more hazardous than others - in general hard woods are more dangerous - for list see https://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/wood-allergies-and-toxicity/. 

 

The white paper dust masks are worse than no dust mask as they give an illusion of protection but in reality provide hardly any. There are other things to watch out for including catches due to inexpert use of tools as they are presented to the workpiece. 

 

A typical lathe may well be spinning upwards of 2000 rpm and if the wood or even pieces of the wood come loose then the resultant projectiles can cause very serious damage and there are few woodturners that cannot claim to have had a few near misses or real accidents.  Ones face comes quite close to the workpiece so as well as the dust mask mentioned above, face protection is also advised.  Sensible precautions to minimise risks can be done such as starting pieces off at low speeds until they become balanced and regular checking of the security of the piece in the jaws.  Even if a piece is apparently being held securely in just one set of jaws it is sensible to bring up the tailstock to keep it locked in.

 

In my opinion finishing is probably the most important part of woodturning and to do this properly often takes considerable time - days or even weeks because you may choose to put on numbers of coats of finish and each may need time to cure and be sanded back. 

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