This review is for those who may be interested in attending a Trent Bosch Workshop like the one I attended a week or so ago. As many of you know Trent lives outside of Fort Collins, Colorado so you fly into Denver, rent a car and travel another 90 minutes or so to Trent's shop.
Scenery is beautiful and outside of town with stunning mountains in the background. I know this is not much for many of you, but for someone like me who lives in the flat lands of south Georgia where our only mountains are fire ant hills, it was pretty cool.
Behind Trent's house along with tractor sheds, horses, piles of big trees for turning wood, tremendous sized cottonwoods, there are two shops- woodturning and metal working.
One thing that impressed me a lot was that Trent personally makes all his tools, so when you buy a TB tool, the 'man' did the fabrication, packaging, shipping and the whole deal. His dad helps with some leg work but its mostly Trent doing it all. I couldn't even imagine how he gets it all done with his teaching, travel, turning for his gallery requests, tool making, keep up his 10 acre farm, and being a great dad and husband. Yep, the family was there as well each day when we ate lunch in the house. Oh, I forgot to mention, Trent even leaves the turning studio early to fix lunch, geez, maybe he sweeps the floor afterwards as well but I didn't see that.
Ok, on to the woodturning....the first day was open forms, discussion on basics, safety, grain orientation, etc. We all made a few bowls. I said to myself quietly that I make bowls at home, this is a long way to come to do the same thing. Well, Trent offered some new techniques, using tools differently, and approaches that I had not used. I committed to doing the bowl turning Trent's way so as not to be 'pigeon holed' on my way only.
The next bowl I turn at home will the Bosch way as he convinced me by helping me to understand why he does it the way he does. One thing I really appreciated about Trent was that he was not pushy, not a know it all, very laid back and try anything you want to kinda guy. We had his full attention for 4 full days and he never turned anything unless he was teaching us technique.
I forgot to mention that when you first walk in to the studio there are 4 Robust American Beauty lathes to greet you, all the tools set up on the wall next to the lathes and all the wood you ever wanted to turn.
The second day was hollow forms or whatever you wanted to do, no pressure. Trent did a demo of a hollow form. and most every one in the class did hollow forms. Of course, we used Trent's tools which are great. Unless you needed a question answered or had a problem Trent was 5 steps away from each of us but he wasn't looking over our shoulder.
The next few days were practicing on carving, sculpting, sandblasting, coloring, and other embellishments. For me and the other guys it was well worth the trip, the cost and the workshop gave me the confidence I needed to move to the next level of turning.
Trent is a great guy and will call you back and answer your emails. I don't know how he does all he does but a trip to his place would be a great experience.
Dave
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