Demo time is coming

Well, after almost going a whole year without a blog post, here is one to tell you of some exciting news of a great demo coming in December, less than two weeks before Christmas. A group of like-minded woodturners have banded together under the umbrella name of Woodturners Retreat to offer a series of woodturning demos.

In part, this comes out of the retreats for woodturners that Ron Campbell of AZ Carbide has been running in the USA for the last few years - until Covid brought everything crashing to a halt. But don't despair, we can meet virtually, as many of us have been doing since lockdowns began. 

The demo will be on Saturday, December 12th, and will be run on the Zoom platform, bringing together turners from Canada, the UK and the USA. As well as being able to watch 6 demonstrators, there'll be break-out rooms for woodturning talk, show-and-tell, and the thing we've all missed from meeting in person at clubs and shows - just getting together to chat. We hope that many of you will be able to join us. 

The other demonstrators are Kade Bolger from Canada, who'll be demonstrating the feared skew; Jeff Hornung from the USA, who will be showcasing his skills with a square platter; Chris Parker from the UK, showing fluting and embellishing; Tod Raines from the USA, demonstrating weed or bud vases; Joanne Sauvageau from Canada, who will be showing ways of decorating wood turning with stamps and inks. It won't be a surprise to anyone that I'll be showing some colouring techniques with paint after turning a platter!

To attract an audience from around th world, it will run from 5pm until 1am GMT. We want to be able to have time to talk with anyone, as we would be able to do at a show, rather than just being on screen for our demos only. So buying a ticket for this event not only covers the demos, but also the chance to talk to the demonstrators and turners from around the world. We're all excited to be taking part and hope to see as many of you there as possible.

Tickets will be available from the website soon. Feel free to ask any questions and check out our Facebook page for more details about the event as well as a way of getting in touch with us. If you haven't like the page yet, what are you waiting for?

 I look forward to chatting to many of you at the event - even if you want to try to persuade me to stick with round and brown!

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