Another busy week this week at The Woodturning Shop! Les was hard at it with his production work, Martin was teaching Monday to Wednesday whilst Natalja headed out to a St John’s Ambulance Emergency First Aid at work course.
With Natalja away this week, this blog entry was cobbled together for you by Martin . . . Normal blog writing will resume next week!
Monday 21st February
Teaching Two to One
Today was the first day of two to one tuition for Paul and Duncan. As they are both fairly new turners, they booked two days tuition with Martin to tidy-up their tool presentation.
Tuesday 22nd February
Second Day – Exploring Colour
Both chaps on day two put into practice the techniques they learned on Monday, then tackled some colouring and embellishing techniques. Paul needs to turn a couple of golden coloured bowls for a commission so this was an ideal time to see how he could do it. Meanwhile, Duncan opted for shades of blue on his piece.
After lunch, it was time to break out the spindle roughing gouge to have an introduction to hollowing. They practiced hollowing with a spindle gouge (as if turning a goblet), and then tried a selection of the hollowing tools from Simon Hope.
New For the Blog: From this week, Martin will be adding a new feature to the blog imaginatively called ‘Product of the Week’. It will appear at the bottom of the weekly blogs and highlight one of our products we think you might be interested in.
Wednesday 23rd February
More Tuition and Les Plays Shop Keeper
With Natalja away on the first day of her St John’s Ambulance First Aid Course and with Martin teaching again, Les was playing shop keeper! To be fair to him, I did catch him unawares to get this shot of him!
Meanwhile, back in the teaching room again, Martin was guiding Karen through a technique tidy-up and a couple of methods of applying metal powder (and other) inlays.
If you think your tool is dull, it probably already is.
Les’ Tip of the Week
Thursday 24th February
Today was time for Les and Martin to go through some stock and place a few new orders to bring stock up to date – particularly the turning tools.
Some supplier delivery lead times are still longer than everyone would like, and we share your frustration. It is what it is though, and after nearly two years of these delays, we are still doing our best to pressure those suppliers to turn the orders around as quickly as possible.
Friday 25th February
Our New First Aider
This week, Natalja has been away from the shop for 3 days completing a St John’s Ambulance course which has given her the necessary first aid knowledge and techniques to deal with any incidents in our workplace (this is in addition to the other first aider onsite here).
The ‘First Aid at Work’ course is nationally recognised, regulated, and recommended by the Health and Safety Executive for workplaces with between 5 and 50 people. This course, we thought was ideal as it provides knowledge and techniques for dealing with more potential incidents than the short ‘Emergency First Aid at Work’ course.
We are very pleased to say that Natalja successfully completed the course with flying colours and Les and Martin wish her many congratulations.
In the meantime, this is the view from the back of the workshops. Nice and calm today before Les teaches another one day beginners course tomorrow for four more students.
Martin’s Product of the Week
Abranet is an amazingly popular product because of it’s durability and ease of cleaning it – knocking the dust out of it.
We’ve packaged up 80, 120, 180, 240, 320 and 400 grit sheets into handy long lasting packs for £4.99 inc VAT (ex shipping).