I am 54 years old and live in Forest , Ontario , Canada . I have been married for 32 years and have two children, a son and a daughter, who both had their university graduations the same week. Since their universities are 500 miles apart it was a fairly hectic week. They are both out on their own now so my wife and I have the house to ourselves. Finally.

I work as a process operating technician in a petrochemical plant in Sarnia 's “chemical valley”. We produce polyethylene which is shipped to customers who produce everything from plastic drain tile to garbage bags. I am a shift worker and we work 12 hour shifts. I am in my 30^th year with the company. The nice thing about the schedule is that it provides quite a lot of time off that I can devote to my hobby. I work the same number of hours in a year as an office worker with the same amount of seniority, but I do it in 146 days.

My father was a building contractor so I grew up around woodworking. My biggest regret is that I did not develop an interest in it until shortly before he passed away, so I missed out on the opportunity to learn more from him. My first few jobs after I finished school were in the area of residential construction so the knowledge would have been valuable. I did some minor renovations in the first house we owned and some fairly major ones in the one we have now. I have a small outbuilding that has become my shop and my interests moved on to furniture type projects.

I bought my first lathe, a Delta 46-700, in about 1991. I read everything I could find on woodturning and bought a couple of Raffan's videos. I have never had any formal instruction so I still don't know if I am doing it right. My lathe work was fairly intermittent for the first several years as I still spent most of my time on flat work projects. Around about 2003 I was seriously contemplating upgrading my lathe and began to look around at what was available. At the time the only lathe on the market that was both a serious upgrade and within my budget (barely) was the Nova DVR which had recently been introduced.

Unfortunately, every time I managed to save up enough money to be almost ready to buy the lathe something else would come up that needed the money more, so it was the fall of 2006 before I finally placed my order. During the intervening years there had been some new lathes introduced that are in the same class in terms of capabilities and price as the DVR but I had already made my decision and I stuck with it. I have not regretted it so far.

Since acquiring the new lathe I have been spending far more of my workshop time turning than any other aspect of woodworking. I like to think that my skills have improved with the extra practice. Purchasing Bill Grumbine's first video probably made the most difference to the way I turn. I was finally able to figure out what this “shear scraping” that everyone was talking about was. My surface finish “off the tool” has improved dramatically from what I used to consider adequate.

Somewhere along the way I started to put together pictorial articles on some of the projects I have turned. I did have one published in the summer 2006 issue of Canadian Woodworking magazine but have not pursued that avenue any further. The money was nice but I haven't got the patience to wait 6 months to see the article in print. Possibly once I retire and try living on my pension my views will change. In the meantime I just publish them on my website as soon as I finish writing them. Like turning itself, it is kind of an “instant gratification” kind of thing.

In line with the instant gratification theme, most of the things I turn are started and finished in a single session. I have done a few segmented pieces and multi-step projects, but for the most part I like to have a completed piece at the end of a turning session. Whether it is a piece to keep or a piece to burn is usually the pertinent question.

Take care

Bob Hamilton