A week of classes

So, as I mentioned yesterday, I thought I’d write about what we’re up to all this week. As it turns out (pun intended), our studios for instruction and practice were apart from all the others, right next door to each other – woodturning on the left, and painting on the right.

Christa’s watercolor class spent a fair bit of time in the studio doing painting exercises to develop skills. But they also made it outside to paint some of the local scenery.

I took a class on turning wood platters with a lathe. We followed a basic format. First, the instructor, Frank Penta, would demonstrate a step in making a platter, ably aided by his assistant/co-instructor Allen Leland. Certain techniques needed to be seen up close, so we would watch on the television, fed by the lathe-mounted camera.

Next, we’d all go out to our assigned lathes to execute to demonstrated step.

Here’s me checking the fine contours of the platter I’m working on.

We also spend a significant amount of time sanding the finished products.

Here’s a platter with the bottom almost completed. The wood is a section of big-leaf maple burl from Oregon.

Frank gave us a lesson on using paints and dyes for coloring wood.

And this is what can happen when you don’t pay close attention to how deep the platter is getting. But rest assured this platter is not destroyed: this is simply a design challenge. As Frank likes to say, “In all my classes, I’ve never lost a platter!”