Tuesday, June 23 Aiguines, France

Woodturning! What can I say. I really enjoy it and am enjoying the classes. Our instructor is Jean-François-Escoulen himself, the founder of this school, and a world class, museum quality, turner. He is well known for these trembleurs, one of which I will be attempting to turn these next three days. He is also known for off center, or escentric, turning, making some amazingly weird objects. There are only three other guys in the class, all Frenchman. There is also a class on jewelry making which has three participants in it, two from France one from Belgium, all French speaking, of course. Luckily the two instructors speak English fine. So Jean-François gives me lots of personal attention, and I completed several practice projects, all involving thin turning. This trembleur I'll be attempting to turn involves a series of decorative objects all connected by the thinnest turning possible. It's all turned from one piece of wood, of course. And by thin I mean 2 millimeters! It's not too bad to get 3 mm, but Jean-François wants it no thicker than 2.5 mm, and 2.1 even better. Just in my practice I've had the gouge slip under a thin finial creating a most unwanted double spiral cutback, and a catch that not only broke the thin turning, but knocked the whole block of wood askew in the chuck. Had to start over on that one. So a lot can go wrong, even the simplest things like accidentally leaning on one's steady rest can ruin hours of work. But then that's life, isn't it.
So I'm having fun. Hope you are too. Good bless.