The Woodturning Weekender

Wow is definitely the word when it comes to describing the Woodturning Weekender held by Chestnut Products at Spalding this weekend. It was a fantastic weekend - from the informal gathering on Friday night, through to the demonstrations and woodturning clinics and the barbecue and entertainment. I don't think Terry and his team could have planned a better event. And it served to show what a friendly and welcoming bunch of people woodturners are. If you weren't able to be there, there is talk of something similar happening again so watch out for details. You can make sure you don't miss any information by registering here.

​The weekend started on the Friday evening with a get together in a local hostelry for food and drink and the chance to meet up with old friends and make new ones. A great evening was had. Saturday started with my demonstration - and I was pleased to be the first demonstrator and get the ball rolling. And probably more pleased that I could then relax and enjoy the rest of the weekend without any more commitments! I always have a few flutters before a demo, but once it was started and I'd raised a few laughs, it was great fun. I may now suffer from the cry of 'Lips!' from future demo audiences, but you had to be there to understand why. Still, anything that gets some audience participation going is good fun.

Great company to be in: the demo team - Phil Irons, Gary Lowe and Pat Carroll

I still take far too much stuff with me to demos, but I figure it's best not to run out of things to do! Rather than show how to make a platter from start to finish, I focused on different colouring ideas and probably revealed too much about the lack of artistic skill needed in some of the processes - after all, there's not much that is daunting about dabbing some stain on with a bit of kitchen roll. Colour choice is obviously important though, so there was the opportunity to deliberately demonstrate some colours that shouldn't really be put with each other. I should have listened to Sheila!

My demo in full swing, with Sheila on the stage camera telling me what colours I should be using...did I listen??

The best part of the demo was speaking to people afterwards who felt ready to take the plunge and to have a go - I hope any of you this applies to have fun and send me some pictures of what you make. Feel free to get in touch if you have anymore questions.

The barbecue on the Saturday night was very well attended - and as well as great food, there was great entertainment from a string quartet, a magician and a musical comic duo. If you dig deep enough on the web you might find Terry's pole dancing move and a very dodgy recording of 'The Woodturner's Song' performed by Andrew Hall and others in various stages of alcoholic excitement.

I loved watching the other demos and learnt a lot from all of them - so thank you to Phil, Gary and Pat. Pat was standing in for Emma Cook, the Tiny Turner, who was unfortunately unable to attend the weekend. I hope she can make the next one. While there were pauses in the main demonstrations, it was great to talk to people running the 'clinics' - various woodturning clubs and also the AWGB, who had some of their travelling exhibition with them and copies of the Ray Key tribute book of his part-turned blanks finished by over a hundred turners from all over the world.

Finally, a huge thank you (again) to Terry and everybody at Chestnut Products.

​STOP PRESS...dates for next year have just been posted...Yippee!!