Woodwork classes in my early days gave me an appreciation of the delight in working with wood. Over the next few decades my interaction with wood was mainly for DIY projects, although a few abstract pieces were carved in wood – see gallery.

Over 40 years were spent as a bridge engineer designing, constructing, maintaining and repairing bridges and other highway structures. I was dealing with things that could be seen and often created; different from so much digital and virtual work these days.  Woodturning is about creating pieces and seemed like an ideal hobby to take up; combining creative, practical and artistic skills. A left and right brained activity. In 2009, I had a first taste of turning with a short course run by Tobias Kaye in Devon.

I then joined our local woodturning club Bristol and Avon Woodturning (ABWT), followed by starting on the excellent courses run by the associated Max Carey Woodturning Trust (MCWT) at The Mill in Portishead. The Apprenticeship course is a foundation course for be-ginners followed by the Journeyman intermediate course.

At that stage there wasn’t a more advanced course to progress on to. I therefore set about putting together such a course, to be called the Artisan course, to increase the range of techniques, skills and materials. Starting with a list of 15 techniques and types of turning, I then researched articles about making items that incorporated these skills. Where this was not possible, I wrote them myself, making an original total of 24 pieces from which to choose. After trialling by making the items myself, Stuart Bradfield from the MCWT then implemented the course, starting in 2011. I described more about this in a 2012 article here.  A Masters course has been added more recently.

Photos of the pieces I made for two of the courses can be seen on the MCWT website here:
MCWT Journeyman Projects  and MCWT Artisan Projects 

I have made a very wide variety of pieces; inspired in part by numerous books, articles, demos, workshops and seminars, both here in the UK and in the USA and by other woodturners. Especially valuable were several 3-day sessions with Nick Agar at his workshop on the banks of the River Dart in Devon. In a small group setting, he inspired us and helped the development of our own ideas and skills, as well as showing so many ways to decorate and enhance our pieces. He also showed how nature and the world around us can be such an important source of ideas for woodturners.

Rather than develop an idea with a series of pieces, as many woodturners do, I usually explore and try out many different ideas, forms and materials to make one off unique pieces. I like the challenge of working out how to make the piece. Some turners are reluctant to embrace colour in their pieces, but for me the majority of my pieces involve colour, decoration or something unusual. I also like to look at ways of cutting up turnings to make unusual or new shapes from pieces of the original.

Most of my wood pieces are made from readily available dried sycamore blanks that have a weak grain pattern, which I am happy to partially or even fully conceal. When using transparent airbrush paints, the grain is often partially visible anyway.
Turners use of alternative materials such as stone, acrylic and resin is not common in the UK, apart from using small resin blanks for making pens or other verry small items.

Apart from viewing my gallery, well over 20 of my illustrated articles are available to read via the ‘Articles’ page.