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Woodturning

I came to the lathe from the potter’s wheel

Trimming was always my favorite part of throwing, and turning is mostly trimming.

Pottery, 2022 to 2025

I threw on the wheel for more than two years before my first lathe class. These are in date order.

  • Two freshly thrown brown clay bowls sitting on wheel bats
    October 2022. Two early bowls, just thrown, still on their bats.
  • Three glazed pots: a cup with a pinched star-shaped rim, a white and green cup, and a shallow dish in rust and blue
    2023. A pinched-rim cup, a two-glaze cup and a shallow dish.
  • A stoneware bowl glazed blue on one side and rust on the other, throwing rings visible inside
    September 2024. A bowl glazed in two overlapping colors.
  • A deep red glazed bowl with a pale textured band around its outer wall
    September 2024. A bowl with a textured band around the outside.
  • A small green glazed vase with a narrow mouth and dimpled sides
    November 2024. A small vase pressed with dimples before glazing.
  • Six small bisque-fired pots in a row on a studio shelf
    July 2025. A set after its first firing, before glaze.
  • A small dark brown glazed vase with a band of bare tan clay, held in a hand
    August 2025. A small vase with a band left as bare clay.
  • A small purple glazed bowl with a band of bare clay below the rim, held in a hand
    August 2025. A bowl with a bare band below the rim.
  • A bowl seen from above, glazed pale green and yellow on one half and dark blue on the other
    August 2025. A bowl glazed in two halves.

Where I learned to turn

Since 2025 I have had more than 100 hours of instruction at the Chicago School of Woodworking from Andy Kuby, Al Miotke and Graham McLachlan. I am a member of Chicago Woodturners and use the club’s Thursday open shop. In 2026 I went to the AAW’s 40th-anniversary symposium in Raleigh and to Turn-On! Chicago.

Turned pieces

  • A three-legged stool with a round seat, half walnut and half a light wood, on beaded turned legs
    Stool: a walnut and light-wood seat, dished with a raised rim, on beaded legs tenoned through it.
  • A second, unfinished three-legged stool on a shop table during glue-up, the leg tenons showing through the seat
    A second stool at glue-up, with the leg tenons wedged through the seat.
  • A wooden goblet with a thin stem and two loose rings around its base
    Goblet with two captive rings, turned free from the stem.
  • A small beech cylinder held in a four-jaw chuck on a lathe, hollowed, with calipers on the bed
    A beech box in the chuck, hollowed, with the step for its lid cut.
  • The finished beech box held in a palm
    The same box off the lathe.
  • A tall wooden box with a domed top and a lid joint two-thirds of the way down
    Capsule box with a domed lid.
  • A small maple bowl cut in half, the two halves held open to show the wall profile
    A bowl I cut in half to see whether the inside followed the outside.
  • A cherry plate with a wide rim textured with rows of dark dimples and dots, a burned line around the well
    Cherry plate with a textured rim and a burned line around the well.
  • An unfinished pale wooden bowl with tool marks on the outside and a chip in the rim
    An earlier bowl, unfinished, with tearout on the outside and a chip in the rim.

The labs

I built three labs for questions I kept asking at the lathe. The halved bowl comes from the same habit: check the work instead of trusting how the cut felt.

They share one set of parts. The gouge you turn over in Gouge Lab is the one on the rest in Turner’s Eye, and the bowl it cuts there is Lathe Studio’s.

  • Gouge Lab

    Which gouge is this, and what is it for?

    Bowl, spindle, detail and roughing gouges on one board, turned through the same views so the differences in mass, flute and grind are visible.

  • Turner’s Eye

    Why does it catch, and what did I do just before it did?

    One cut scene where handle height, flute opening, rest gap and fiber support move together, with a readout of which one drifted first.

  • Lathe Studio

    Will that curve look right once it is round?

    A bowl, hollow form or goblet profile you can drag, revolved and halved in 3D in four timbers, so a curve and its wall can be judged in the round before a blank is committed to it.

What they are not

They are rehearsal, not instruction. Ten minutes at a lathe beside someone who has already made the mistake you are about to make teaches more than any of them.

Each lab draws in 2D first and adds the 3D view when you scroll to it. Without WebGL the 2D drawing stays, and Lathe Studio’s profile can still be edited.

Revised