I wish I had read Mark's rant because this reminded me that years ago in another club we had an RPT who did the club judging and I used to make things with the details that would get me a higher score with him,but in actual fact all that happened was it restricted my own ideas.
As an RPT now, I am very careful when asked to judge a club competition. I usually say what I am looking for in a piece. If there is detail that is meant to be crisp I look at the crispness,I look for tooling marks and finish among other things until eventually I look at the shape/style/design.I have to say that the piece I normally choose is the piece I like the most.
Regards
John BHT
Apologies for hijacking this post, which asked about the rights and wrongs of footed items but I noticed several postings about the judging of competitions, so I wanted to offer an option used at several of the clubs I have visited, that avoids that somewhat tricky situation.
Instead of asking the demonstrator, or any individual, to judge pieces, the club gives a voting token to every person at the meeting. Each person can then vote for the piece they like. Some will vote for technical skill, some for finish, some for design but the key point is that everyone has their own preference and this process means it is the piece that appeals to the majority that 'wins'. This also avoids putting the demonstrator in the awkward position of being the only one with an opinion of the pieces on offer, something I do not enjoy having to do.
This takes me back to the original question, and my agreement with all the other postings - there aren't any 'rules'; guidelines based on experience - yes, but the thing that matters is 'do you like it?', or I supposed more importantly, does the 'end user' like it? If we all worked to 'rules' all our work would be much the same, and we would have lost the artistry that is woodturning.
