17 Jun 2023 – Training Day

On Saturday 17 June 2023, we held our second one to one Training Day of the year.  As with all of our Training Days, they have been very popular in the past and again this one was no exception and was soon fully booked.  Our experienced five Instructors for the day were, Chris Fisher, Ian ‘Zak’ Flack, Darren Brown in all day and Mick Close covering the morning sessions and John Mitchell in the afternoon.  With our students having a range of levels of experience, from absolute beginner through to more advanced turners, we catered for them all.  We get the instructor to contact their students prior to the day, to discuss what they would like to do.  This is also to gauge the level of experience so that the lesson can be aimed at the right level and to ensure our basic requirements have been covered at some point during the turners progression into the craft.

We have recently updated our PPE available to members and guests to ensure whilst at our meetings/events, such as this, their safety is our priority.  We have produced an induction syllabus to cover all the basics from Health & Safety through to the lathe, tools and basic turning skills to get them hooked on the craft.

All our students seemed to enjoy themselves and went away happy and hopefully having learned something new to enable them to turn safely at home.  Some booked again on our next Training Day on Sat 16 Sept 2023, so we must be doing something right.  If you missed out this time, please check out our Training Days page HERE, where you can see what is available and get your booking in for Sept or Nov.  These spaces get snapped quickly so don’t hang about.

Thank you to firstly all our Instructors for giving up their time to enable these days to be put on, but also to John Cox for the refreshments to keep us going and not forgetting Dave Eason and Dai Crawford for helping with the setting up and for all those students at the end of the day who helped with the clearing up.  Thank you.

Whilst the Training Day was going on, we also opened up the Club Shop between 10am and midday, where Dave was our shop keeper for the morning and was able to learn a bit more about the new POS system and make a few sales as well.  It would have be nice to see a few more visitors other than those already at the Training Day, so it is unlikely that we will open the Club Shop on future training days, but watch this space.

A big thank you to Dai who took on the job as hedge cutter as well as painter, with some help from me, Martin, we gave the sides of the container a badly in need coat of paint to protect it from the elements.  We were hoping to get the wooden lean to also painted as well, but as it was only Dai who turned up to help, it will have to done on the next Training Day in September, weather permitting.  Please, please, if you can spare some time to help, we would really appreciate it as its not fair to leave it all up to someone else.

For more photos of the Training Day please check out the Gallery.