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Michael Anderson Demo and Class

David Propst

David Propst

Joined
Mar 17, 2005
Messages
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Location
Granite Falls, NC
I had the opportunity and great pleasure to spend a couple days with this forum's Michael Anderson last week when he came to the North Carolina Woodturner’s club in Hickory NC. He taught a Friday all day class on captured tops, a Saturday demo on a captured egg sculture, and afternoon class on a captured spinning bowl.

Michael is an exceptional demonstrator and instructor. These are complex projects and he did an excellent job of explaining and demonstrating them with tight time constraints. His creativity and enthusiasm for turning shines, along with a very grounded understanding of tool presentation and control.

If you have a chance I’d highly recommend going to one of his demos or classes.

He will be teaching a week-long class at Arrowmont starting May 1st, and demonstrating the following weekend at the AAW Symposium in Raleigh NC. His Arrowmont class is “The Calabash Canvas: Form and Surface Treatment”.

Last year he won best of show at the 2024 Best of Tennessee Craft Exhibition held at the Arrowmont for his calabash bowl “Winter Days”.

Michael is very nice and humble guy. Hopefully he will not delete this post, because he would never tell you all this himself :-)

Link to Michael’s Arrowmont Calabash Class


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David Propst said:
great pleasure to spend a couple days with this forum's Michael Anderson last week when he came to the North Carolina Woodturner’s club in Hickory NC.
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I've had the great pleasure to attend a two of Michael's demo - excellent. I love his running (and useful) commentary, his creativity, and his obvious skill. Any club that can get him wouldn't be sorry! Don't bother coming to one of his demo if you don't want to learn something or just want to watch someone stand there silently and turn! He explains what he's about to do, what he's doing, options and variations. I came away with lots of ideas and some great entries in my notebook.

His demos could also be very helpful for those who do demos or want to!

Our Knoxville club also had Ted Pelfry do a fantastic demo recently (hollow forms) and we've had the pleasure of a bunch of wonderful demos from John Lucas over the years. If your club is looking for good demonstrators, can't go wrong to try to book these TN guys! (BTW, I don't say any of this lightly - I could name demonstrators I've considered a waste of good time, some are well known and do the regional/national symposiums. I've don't think I've walked out on any but one session, but I know who to avoid in the future!)

JKJ
 
Michael, how do you keep shavings from filling those bibs?
 
Doug Rasmussen said:
What does "captured" mean as in "captured spinning bowl".
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Captured refers to a spinning top on a pedestal. The top has a recess turned into it and the pedestal has a little “bowl” at the top that friction fits into the top. Michael has a detailed illustrated article on making these in the November 2025 AAW Woodturning Fundamentals online magazine. See link below.

Turn a Captured Spin Top
 
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