I've got two - one major and one - well we'll see how it turns out.

The most significant break through - for me - was Peter Pipe
- of East Bay Woodturners - grinding a curve on my 3/4" skew
-AND showing me how to do it. THAT changed my view of a skew
- from a scary tool - to my favorite tool - and opened up all kinds
of possibilities - which I'm still exploring. Now I'm fearless (but
not reckless) with skews and can do more with it than the tool
rack full of other turning tools.

The second breakthrough was my recent plunge into turning
small - really small - as in 0.02" diameter - in poplar. I'm
trying cuts I woudln't even consider trying on something anything
bigger than maybe 3/4" in diameter. When turning small, the
worse that can happen is that a little teeny tiny piece of wood
might fly off - harmlessly. And I don't even worry about a catch
scaring the hell out of me. Even if things go disasterously wrong
I'm only out what would otherwise be just scraps. So, because
the risk is so low I'm trying techniques that will work at a larger
scale. If practice makes perfect, learning on small scale pieces
allows for a LOT of practice.

And because, at this scale, sanding is difficult or impossible, I can
concentrate on creating shapes and forms and combinations - in
10 or 15 minutes rather than hours or daze (I tend to lose interest
after 30 minutes, an hour at the most). It's kind of like doing 30
second sketches - get the important lines - leave the rest to the
viewer. That got me to see The Whole instead of focusing on each
element - independently.

The spin off of this second breakthrough was that I tried
turning with a square end, single bevel chisel - and I mean
a Buck Bros. 1/4" bench chisel and not a "real" woodturning
tool - like a bedan. Hell, I'm turning the real small stuff using
an old bayonet saw blade with the teeth ground off it -
with a paper towel "handle" (in the third photo on this page)

http://web.hypersurf.com/~charlie2/T...urning14D.html

charlie b