OVER THE YEARS

From 1970 to 1975 I taught industrial arts to 4th through 8th grade boys and girls. During that time I learned what a pleasure turning was and how much others enjoyed learning it. In 1975 I went to England to take Peter Child's course and to see how he did it. His approach was largely one of demonstration, with the notion that you would practice what you could remember once you got home. I did not like the approach because of its lack of practice while there, but I did like the idea of offering instruction in my home workshop.

So in 1976 I started offering woodturning instruction in Westminster West (Putney), VT, in the basement of the house we started building in the same year. My first two students, two doctors, helped me prop up drywall around the toilet, and we flushed the toilet with a hose hooked up to a pump in the basement. My family climbed a ladder to our bedrooms on the second floor. But the kitchen and family room were "done," and we served meals there. Soon the students' guest rooms were done and we started taking students into the house as well as providing meals.

Then we finished our bedrooms on the second floor and one of my student seeing our daughters climbing the ladder, said, "I condemn the house." As it happened he was a master stairbuilder and with his help I designed a  an impressive stair of mahogany and white oak. In the meantime classes continued in the basement workshop. 

We have pictures of the house a year later during an annual meeting of the International Wood Collectors Society. The drywall was taped but not painted. But soon after the picture was taken, the living room was finished and the house was "done" except for a few details that would not be finished for many years. And still the workshops continued. I take much pleasure in seeing many of my former students as members of the American Association of Woodturners which you can link with here. www.woodturner.org/

Time passed, I was selling Myford lathes which I use in the workshops, and then added tools and other supplies, such as Permacel double-faced tape. Students continued to come to Vermont. In slow seasons or when requested, I went to them.

Around 1997 I took an extended "sabbatical," sailing south to the Bahamas and then out to Corpus Christi, TX, and finally back to a marina in Ft. Myers, FL. While living on the boat I commuted daily to an "old Florida" property where I built the turning workshop and house in which I live. Thus I am reminded of my Vermont experience, except for the additions of hurricanes and warmer weather. The shop and house survived Hurricane Charley nicely, but most of the pine trees were snapped off half way up. For some odd reason, none hit the house.

Each summer I go north to Massachusetts and Vermont.