Magazines

The last time Practical Woodworking covered woodturning, we set about enthusing you with the UK’s most popular woodworking discipline, advising you about equipment and how to use it effectively before getting you started with a few simple projects. This time we know we’re preaching to the converted, and if you’re anything like the turners we know and love, you’ll be champing at the bit to explore this fascinating hobby. So the collection of techniques and projects here has been chosen to advance your skills and, if you like, set you on a journey that you will enjoy travelling for the rest of your woodworking life.

To that end we’re harking back to the way that the craftsmen’s guilds trained youngsters, rising from humble apprentice to Master Craftsman… or Turner, in this case. To help you to attain the giddy height of Master Turner we present projects and techniques by some of the best turners in the country, designed to introduce important techniques. For example, Colin Simpson’s fruit bowl introduces texturing methods at apprentice level, while Alan Holtham focuses on specialised texturing tools for the journeyman.
We also explore long-hole boring, multi-centred techniques, the importance of grain matching, hollowing branch wood, copy turning, thread chasing, cutting and pasting, wet wood turning, turning bowls square, indexing, avoiding distortion, and tackling segmented work.