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West Midlands Woodturners

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Demonstrator Training Day

On December 6th a Demonstrator Training day was held, sponsored by the AWGB, and conducted by Peter Bradwick..The members taking part were Malcolm Caine, Tim Davies, Keith Lanchester and Malcolm Thorpe.

 

The day started at 8.30. The four candidates each gave a short introduction before Peter Bradwick, the trainer from AWGB set out the program. Several club members came and were invited to observe and give feedback throughout the day. The aims of the course were to develop and improve the communication and demonstrating skills of the trainees.

For the first exercise the trainees each had to give a five minute presentation on a subject of our choice, Malcolm Caine titled his 'Caine on Caine' using an old front page of the Radio Times bearing the caption 'Caine on Caine' as his main prop. The second Malcolm, Malcolm Thorpe, gave us a short talk on Lace Bobbins which have been his hobby for many years and then Keith Lanchester gave a talk on woodturning gouges titled 'Gouges and Grinds'. Finally Tim Davies spoke for five minutes on his 'Comfort zone' and how he felt outside it at that moment in time. Afterwards Peter gave a short critique of each of the presentations and then went through the sections of his notes covering communication, body language and presentation. It was felt far better to have given the talks before covering these sections from the notes as it did not influence how the trainees behaved or what they said during their talk.

For the afternoon session they each had to present a twenty minute turning demonstration on the lathe using materials that they had previously prepared. At the end of each demonstration, Peter passed comments together with friendly and constructive discussion among the other candidates and the audience. This session was the most rewarding as it enabled each candidate to assess himself against the criteria brought out in Peter’s talk before lunch.

Malcolm Thorpe gave a very brief introduction before turning a lace bobbin as he would have done in a production run. He then went back over the turning operations explaining clearly each stage and finishing the bobbin with friction polish. Malcolm Caine turned a tea light holder out of a laminated blank similar to those he makes when demonstrating to the public and gave a very good explanation of how he centres the piece on the faceplate and fixes it with hot melt glue. Tim Davies turned a short goblet (or large eggcup depending on how you looked at it!) out of a blank which he had already prepared with a spigot for chucking. Keith Lanchester turned a three legged bowl out of a cube by mounting between centres on the longest diagonal, forming a spigot and then turning the piece around into the chuck.

Following another break, the day concluded with another plenary session taking the form of a summary of what had taken place during the day, and the distribution of course notes.

 

Some comments from Tim Davies.

Although I have been wood turning for about eight to ten years, I have never ‘performed’ to an audience and I wanted guidance to improve my self confidence and presentation skills. I do not aspire to be a professional demonstrator but I think it would be both beneficial to me and our club if I were able to share my skills in a professional manner.

My planned project was a long stemmed goblet in Yew. It soon became clear that it was too ambitious for the time so I changed at the last minute to a small goblet in iroko. Fortunately I had put a spare piece of wood in my tool kit. I completed the project within the time but took a couple of risks and got away with it without the audience appearing to notice. The audience appeared satisfied with my performance but the feedback that I was calm and in control belied how I really felt. Whilst I was not as nervous as when I gave the five minute presentation, I thought that my mouth was just a little ahead of my brain and I was hanging on as I went through the demonstration. At the end of the day, what matters is how the observers perceived my performance.

I learnt a lot from the whole day. It is clear to me that I need to develop the following areas of my performance.

 

· To take control of the ‘stage’ and make it into my comfort zone.

· To believe that, in general, an audience wants the demonstrator to succeed.

· To select a project or projects within my capability and practise before hand.

· To always have a ‘plan B’ to fall back on.

· To improve time management.

I am grateful to Peter Bradwick and the AWGB for their time and the opportunity to undertake this training.

 

 

“Now the talking starts”

“I wanted to improve my self confidence”

 

 

“And now the work begins!”