How do you determine the quality of turned work ?

[Bryan Milham]

John,

If you can crack that one, Turned Wood Art will be as important in Britain as it is in America.

[fuzzyturns]

I don't think standards have slipped. As far as production work is concerned, there is simply no (or not much) demand for top notch hand turned stair spindles. The level of quality produced by automated copy lathes is clearly enough for most customers, otherwise they wouldn't buy them. As with all things in an open market, there's a balance between demand and supply. If the average customer would ask for a higher quality, then the makers would provide that higher quality. Clearly these machine made spindles are fit for purpose.
The same is true for other wooden items: chopping boards, mallets, dibbers, you name it.
There will always be a market for high end hand made goods, but the size of that market depends on customer appreciation, availability of dispensable income and a number of other factors. Right now the times are grim, let's face it.

[Bryan Milham]

Fuzzy,

You are right and you are wrong.

Yes, automatic copy lathes will produce a run of perfectly usable banisters (or other items) in quantity, either for retail or a major refurb job.

However, and to take my last job, I was asked to make 2 banister spindles to replace broken ones from an 1880's house staircase. The set-up cost for a copy lathe was a ridiculous amount (for just 2 spindles) and it was far cheaper for the customer to pay me at my rate and associated costs.

[bodrighywood]

I have to disagree with you Fuzzy, There are a number of top notch turners making a living out of hand crafted work but the ones that get noticed (at least in the turninf fraternity) tend to be the ones who produce artistic work. Here and on Facebook we see Steve Jones and Richard Findlay for example but they aren't alone. Personally my bread and butter work that pays the bills ranges from a wide variety of crafting tools of which I get regular orders to parts for old houses and other buildings. I do a fair few bigger shows throughout theyear and whilst I sell a few more artistic pieces in the main I cover costs, and make profits from a lot of smaller things. It isn't that people don't want what we do, it is more a case of promoting and advertising in the right circles. I have contacts in the top end furniture industry and the thing that gets them business and costs the money is the fact that what they make is handcrafted in the main.

Pete

[fuzzyturns]

Pete, I don't think we are actually disagreeing at all. We are just looking at different aspects of the same thing. As you point out, there is a market for hand turned items. Often this is where the setup costs for an automated run is such that hand made becomes cheaper (for the retailer/customer). Sometimes it is where the uniqueness of the end product is the determining factor.
I would wager, though, that the number of turners making a living from production runs has been getting steadily smaller over the last 30 years, and that trend won't be reversed. When automated copy lathes first came to being, they were expensive and it took a lot of time to prepare a production run. These costs are coming down all them time, and very soon it won't make much of a difference whether the run has 200 items or 2. That's when individuality is the last resort of wood turners.
It's the same in the ceramics industry. Mass production of plates, cups, saucers and so on has become the standard. Yes, there are some folks who make a living out of making hand made ceramics, but they do not compete with the machine made stuff. They are all off on a different level, and that's where we need to move towards.