Читать книгу Mike Darlow's Woodturning Series: Useful Woodturning Projects - Mike Darlow - Страница 20

Woodturning involves manipulating a sharp edge and usually an adjacent bevel against wood moving at high velocity. Turning is peculiar that the risk of a catch can only be reduced by increasing one’s turning competence, not by taking more but thinner cuts. And a person’s turning competence is strongly related to the quality of the techniques learnt and to the commitment to continue to replicate them.

Teachers typically teach the techniques which they themselves use. These techniques may not be optimal. I doubt that there is an international consensus on which techniques are optimal and their exact details. Further, there is a reluctance to objectively compare the conflicting techniques promoted by different turning teachers.

There may also be a shortage of sound tuition in the full range of basic turning techniques. Much of the tuition advertised is focussed on turning bowls and vessels. It follows that those who thus achieve competence in the limited range of turning techniques usually associated with bowl and vessel turning will tend to avoid attempting designs which require competence in other turning techniques. If there is to be a resurgence in turning useful objects, there has to an increase in the range of techniques taught by turning teachers.

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist and a columnist for the New York Times, in 2003 exposed a similar situation to that of woodturning teaching when writing about of all subjects English food: “a free-market economy can get trapped for an extended period in a bad equilibrium in which good things are not demanded because they have never been supplied, and are not supplied because not enough people demand them”.⁸

A related problem is that a considerable proportion of beginners don’t seek formal tuition. Instead they’re self-taught and/or are taught inferior techniques by a well-meaning person. This of course lessens the demand for, and therefore the supply of, quality teaching of the full range of turning techniques.

I have recently taught a class of typical amateurs: in their 50s and 60s, been turning for several years, sold a few turnings at markets, and in my opinion with little idea of how to perform even the basic cuts surely and efficiently. But by focussing on turning one-offs, avoiding difficult cuts, and using excessive sanding they were able to produce turnings which were admired. Their reaction to the tuition was revelatory: new potential opened up, confidence was gained. However this was accompanied by the realisation that most of their earlier turning experience had been a waste.