Drop in woodturning skills clinic.

Today I held a drop in woodturning skills clinic for our Burnham on Sea Woodturning club  http://www.burnham-on-sea-wtc.co.uk/.
The purpose was to give members the opportunity to drop in throughout the day and get help with any problems they are having with their woodturning.A good number of members attended and they all brought their tools in.What very soon became apparent is that most of their problems stemmed from badly profiled and sharpened tools.As soon as their tools were re profiled and sharpened correctly most of their problems disappeared and they went away with renewed confidence.Most have jigs so it should not be too dificult for them to repeat the profiling and sharpening .
It does make me wonder how many woodturners give up woodturning because they cannot get good results when all they probably need is some tuition on sharpening and profiling their tools.
I have a student coming to me for two days next week who has been turning for a number of years but tells me he is fed up with having to do a lot of sanding to get good results.I have told him to bring his tools along as I suspect that is where a lot of the trouble lies.
I am confident that once his tools are sorted and he is shown the correct way to use them he will go away
and create new works with a lot less sanding.