I just finished 4 days at the American Association of Woodturners annual symposium.

The AAW annual symposium was here in Phoenix this year, so I was able to attend for the first time. There were four rotations of demonstrations each day. I got to see demos on pen segmenting, bowl segmenting, bowl and platter turning, hollow forms, embellishments, crotch turning (No wisecracks, now...He was making the most elegant little turned sculptures from small branch crotches.) Loads of information and lots of goodies at the trade show.

But I'm sure whipped. Next time I'll have to TRAIN for one of these...about five miles a day should do it

I've only manage to get to one such event over here but it was well worth it, I came home buzzing with ideas & renewed vigour, glad to hear you had a good time at Phoenix Sharon

I'm sure you gained much from your four days hard laboring and came away with lots of ideas, now to put them into action

Lucky you, never been to any thing like this.

Wow, 4 days is a marathon and heaven at the same time.

Sounds like hard work Sharon! ! Would love to go to one of the big shows on your side of the pond. Bet it's a sensory overload

All this lovely chat and not one picture, it never happened????
Glad you had a good if exhausting time.

Sounds like you had a very exciting time Sharon, would love to see some pictures if you have some ..

Good on yer Sharon sounds like you had a wonderful time and got a shed load of new ideas you will have to put them into practice before you forget them LOL

I didn't take a camera. (And my cell phone is a little flip phone with a terrible camera.) I really just wanted to concentrate on watching and taking notes. There were some Brits there, and I sat next to a man from New Zealand. (He was about to melt down! It is the middle of winter down there and we hit 110 F while he was here. He and the Alaskan were suffering!) They had BIG TV screens and really good video camera work, so everyone could see exactly what was going on. I actually could see better from a few rows back watching the video than I could from the front row. There were twelve rotations of demos, with fifteen demos going on each rotation! I needed to be triplets! But I managed to get to most of the demos I wanted to see. (Most of them were repeated several times during the show.) I spent a week before the show working and re-working my schedule, but still missed a couple I wanted to see.

Now I'm going to go out and finish that mesquite bowl that has been giving me so much trouble. I learned what I was doing wrong!

Sharon

Wow, talk about envious.

Sounds like a heck of an event.

So glad you enjoyed it Sharon. You'll have to pass some of the tips on to your mates on here

One of the best things I learned about was negative rake scrapers. I didn't even know they existed. They are much more forgiving than a regular scraper, you use it flat on the rest, not "downhill" or tilted at an angle. I was amazed at how well it cleaned up tearout on a big platter. I bought a new scraper and am going to grind a negative rake on it.

Show us a photo when its done please Sharon