About

Hello, my name is Ed Pretty and among other things, I am a wood turner. I divide my work into commercial turning, artistic turning, teaching and demonstrating. I do a fair bit of production work for a few regular clients as well as one-off jobs for local furniture makers. I have limited my artistic work recently because something had to give time-wise, but I do maintain some pieces in the Circle Craft Gallery on Granville Island in Vancouver. Live teaching and demonstrating have taken a back seat due to the present Covid situation but I have picked up that slack with online Interactive Remote Demonstrations (IRD).

My online IRD’s are divided into two groups; private, for woodturning clubs or guilds and scheduled. Guilds can book me for topics of their choice by emailing me through the Contact page. My wife, Arlene, has “renovated” my site, listing my scheduled IRD’s on a new page, Interactive Remote Demonstrations. To sign up, go to the Shop page.

As always, I maintain this site as a place to share information, available to anyone who may find it of interest. I have been most fortunate to learn first from my father – an experienced traditional turner, from many of my peers and from many turners from around the world who have demonstrated for the Greater Vancouver Woodturners. I feel that it is my responsibility to pass that knowledge along on kind.

Because it has been a long, uncertain process to get where I am, I am very sensitive to the needs of new turners as well as experienced turners venturing into new territory. I am, myself, always learning new techniques. In my profession as a firefighter I became an experienced trainer, enjoying the process of helping others learn, keeping themselves and others safe. It is my hope that now I will be able to help others learn the skills they need to enjoy woodturning to their best ability. Surprisingly, that ability is often greater than they themselves believe. The great satisfaction in training is having the opportunity to help bring that out.

To that end, I hope that everyone is able to gain as much as possible from my posts and the comments posted by others. Should anyone who is not a woodturner review the posts and gain a greater appreciation of how we do what we do, I would be most pleased.

Thank you for visiting my blog.