Exploring End-Grain Turning: Cups and Canisters
This class will introduce students to end-grain turning as we make small cups, bowls, and canisters.
Not scheduled right now. Last taught 2026.
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The workshop
This class will introduce students to end-grain turning as we make small cups, bowls, and canisters. Unlike traditional bowl turning, where the grain runs across the lathe bed, end-grain turning aligns the grain parallel to the bed, much like spindle work. This shift opens up new textures, techniques, and possibilities.
In this hands-on class, you’ll learn to work confidently with both traditional bowl gouges and ring tools, gaining control and precision as you shape the wood. You’ll explore how reversing the lathe’s direction can help with hollowing such forms, the importance of considering grain support to achieve the finest surface, and discuss various food-safe finishes.
Each student will have their own lathe and plenty of time to practice. By the end of the workshop, you’ll have created several beautiful cups or bowls—and for those ready to take things a step further, there’s the option to craft a canister with a perfectly fitted friction lid.
Whether you’re expanding your turning skills or simply curious about a new approach, this class offers a rewarding mix of technique, creativity, and discovery.
Skills and techniques
- Various ways to mount the blank on the lathe, using spur drives and chucks
- How to use traditional bowl gouges on end grain, and ways that ring tools can help us tackle the inside of vessels
- How to safely turn in reverse, allowing turners to access the “far wall” of the piece
- The steps in producing a canister from a single piece of wood
- A discussion of various finishes to make your vessel food safe and ready for use
Before you come
Details for students
Where
One of the farm's studios, confirmed at check-in. See the campus
Staying on the farm
Housing, meals, the daily schedule, and places to stay nearby are on Prepare for your workshop.
Your instructor
Eric Goodson
Eric Goodson is a greenwood turner, carver, and craft educator based in Ashland, New Hampshire. He makes turned and hand-carved woodenware, bowls, plates, cups, canisters, boxes, and utensils such as spoons, spatulas, and spreaders, designed for daily use and quiet enjoyment. Drawing on Scandinavian traditions of simple, functional sculpture, his work emphasizes clean lines, tactile surfaces, and forms that reward slow, repeated handling.
Inspired by historic Scandinavian woodenware, Eric began turning replicas on a foot-powered pole lathe in 2013. He now turns those same forms, ølskål, vangar, snippeskål, and skruvask among them, primarily on a western electric lathe while preserving the pole-lathe aesthetic of his early work. Working exclusively with locally and sustainably harvested green wood, he embraces the subtle movement and animation that occur as a piece dries, and he prefers the crisp, tool-cut surfaces left by a sharp blade to heavily sanded finishes. He seals and finishes pieces with food-safe treatments, natural polymerizing oils, milk paints, Hassui liquid glass, and urushi lacquer, making them durable and suitable for everyday use.
Alongside his studio practice, Eric teaches across New England, offering classes in pole-lathe and electric turning, spoon carving, and decorative carving, and leading weekly children’s woodcarving sessions. A former high-school teacher influenced by the sloyd tradition, he uses teaching methods that build skill and muscle memory, adapts to diverse learning styles, and views craft as a vehicle for personal growth. Eric is a juried member of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen. Skål!
Questions about this workshop, housing, or meals? Email registrar@sanbornmills.org or call (603) 435-7314. Please read the workshop policies before you register.