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Another statement from Michael Dunbar:2

Modern turning also differs from old-time turning in that turners no longer make large numbers of the same object. In other words they do not do a lot of duplication.

Exact duplication is undesirable if you’re a turner of Fine Art, but there are two largely-true beliefs which discourage some from attempting useful turning:

• It can require some of the equipment and skills used in cabinetmaking and/or joinery. (Fortunately the growth in woodturning clubs and other communal woodworking facilities including Mens Sheds and SheSheds has improved access to these for turners who don’t have the necessary other woodworking equipment themselves.)

• It requires a greater range of turning competence than does non-useful turning.

Is it difficult to achieve competence in the conventional turning techniques? Dale Nish in his book Creative Woodturning seems to think so because he states that the cutting method “can be learned only with much practice and patience on the part of the learner. . . The personal satisfaction and sense of achievement derived from a mastering of the cutting method is enjoyed by only a few master woodturners. This goal is something the beginner might set for himself.”³

But go back in time, and you’ll find that turning was regarded as a low-status, low skill trade: “The turning lathe was, and still is, despised as unworthy of a skilled worker”.⁶ This statement by Gustav Ecke is too damning, but it is true that hand woodturning is not among the most difficult of hand skills. It does not require the high innate artistry of figurative woodcarving, nor the cabinetmakers’ ability to use a large range of machines and hand tools to achieve snug fits. Therefore I believe that Nish exaggerates the difficulty of achieving the level of turning competence required for success in useful turning.

How long does it take to acquire a basic range of turning skills? If you don’t have any bad turning habits to unlearn and the teaching is sound, in my experience it’s about 20 hours of tuition and 20 hours of disciplined practice. Obviously, improvement will continue thereafter, but that 40 hours should provide a sound foundation on which to build greater speed and sureness. Alas, only a minority seem to be prepared to make that commitment. It is true that for many turning is a pastime or a social activity, but should that preclude the initial commitment of a mere 40 hours for a hobby which might be pursued for decades? Perhaps because the true situation isn’t explained to them, beginners mistakenly believe that all-round turning competence is beyond them.

Figure 1.7 A list of items to turn published in 1881. Many of the uses are no longer relevant, but new items have since been invented; for example the CD and DVD markers in chapter 10. The list is scanned from: Holtzapffel, John Jacob. Hand or Simple Turning. New York: Dover Publications, 1976, pp. 458 and 459. (Originally published in 1881.)

Malcolm Gladwell in the second chapter of his popular 2008 book Outliers opined that to fulfill a person’s potential for demanding activities such as computer programing, violin playing to concern standard, lawyering, etc. needs about 10,000 hours of practicing, equivalent to 5 year’s full-time.⁷ Woodturning is a far less demanding activity, and therefore much less than 10,000 hours is needed for the enthusiastic amateur to achieve competence.

Two factors which Gladwell doesn’t properly cover are:

• The asymptotic nature of acquiring skill through instruction and practice. (An asymptote is a ‘straight line which is approached more and more closely by a curve, but not met by it.) As figure 1.8 illustrates, acceptable competence can be achieved in only a small proportion of the time needed for mastery.

• Learning and practicing inferior rather than optimal techniques ensures that only partial competence can be achieved. To later achieve high competence would require ingrained suboptimal techniques to be “unlearned” before the optimal techniques could be learned.

Figure 1.8 The asymptotic nature of acquiring woodturning expertise.