All Things Woodturning livestream tackles finish turning on May 15

Finish turning gets the spotlight

Tod Raines is bringing All Things Woodturning back to one of the most revealing moments in the lathe room: finish turning. The next livestream is set for May 15, 2026, at 1:00 p.m. Central, and it is built the way woodturners actually learn best, with a live demo, an open conversation, and room for the kinds of questions that come up when a piece is almost, but not quite, done.

That matters because finish turning is where a good rough shape either comes together or gets exposed. Wall thickness, balance, tool control and surface quality all have to line up at the end, and Raines is using this session to focus on exactly that pressure point. For turners who want a practical way to sharpen their eye and their cuts, this is the kind of session that can save a piece before the final sanding and finishing stage turns it into a lesson the hard way.

What the session is built to do

Woodturning Tool Store frames All Things Woodturning as a working session, not a polished promo reel. The series is organized around tools and equipment, processes and techniques, and wood and materials, which is why the format keeps coming back to concrete problems instead of abstract theory. Finish turning fits that approach perfectly, because it is the stage where form, tool choice and surface prep all meet in the same few minutes at the lathe.

Raines comes prepared with a topic, but the show is meant to stay conversational. He wants viewers to steer the discussion with questions, comments and insight, which makes the livestream feel more like a shop demonstration with a knowledgeable friend than a one-way lesson. That format is especially useful for a subject like finish turning, where the right answer often depends on the blank in the chuck, the cut you are trying to clean up, and the surface you want to leave behind.

How to tune in

The May 15 session is part of a recurring every-other-Friday cadence at 1:00 p.m. Central, so the timing is predictable even when the topic changes. Woodturning Tool Store says the stream is typically simulcast across several places at once:

• Tod Raines’s personal Facebook page
• the Woodturning Tool Store Facebook page
• his YouTube channel
• StreamYard

The event page also says viewers can register for the stream, and archived videos of past episodes are available afterward. That combination makes the series easy to fit into a normal shop schedule. If you can watch live, you get the back-and-forth as it happens. If not, the archive gives you a chance to revisit a cut, a setup or a finishing sequence later.

Why finish turning is such a useful topic

The practical appeal of this session is easy to see if you have ever gotten a form nearly right and then watched the last steps wobble out the result. Finish turning is where the piece stops being rough stock and starts becoming something ready to present. That is when tiny differences in thickness or tool angle suddenly matter, and it is also when sanding and finishing mistakes can undo a lot of patient shaping.

That is why a livestream devoted to finish turning should resonate with people trying to improve real shop results. The session sits in the same lane as earlier All Things Woodturning topics that dealt with favorite chuck jaws, sharpening with jigs and a bench grinder, bowl gouge geometry, sanding fixtures on the lathe and the role of compressed air in the shop. The archive also shows episodes on collaborative sculptural turning, eccentric spiraling chucks, natural-edge bowl decisions and finishing a small box. Taken together, those topics tell you what the series is really for: solving the everyday problems that come up when a tool has to cut cleanly and a piece has to leave the lathe looking intentional.

A long-running, shop-first format

All Things Woodturning is not a one-off experiment. The archive shows the series has been running for years, with examples dating back at least to 2021 on YouTube and Facebook. That history matters because it explains why the show feels so usable to working turners and serious hobbyists alike. This is a recurring forum where the questions change with the topic, but the goal stays the same: give people something they can take back to the shop and use on the next piece.

That same hands-on logic also fits Woodturning Tool Store itself. The company says it is dedicated to providing quality woodturning tools and equipment to the woodturning community, and Raines is identified as the owner. The business is based in Allen, Texas, which helps explain why the livestream feels like an extension of a real shop operation rather than a detached content channel. The company also says it can provide interactive remote demonstrations on most woodturning topics for clubs and members, including electronic streaming through Zoom-style platforms.

What viewers can expect from the live demo

The real value of the May 15 Finish Turning session is access. Instead of traveling to a club meeting or waiting for a distant demo, turners can jump into a live broadcast that is built around the questions people actually ask at the lathe. Because Raines is willing to talk through tools, techniques and materials in real time, the session offers a practical way to see how one experienced turner approaches the final cuts that shape a piece’s surface and presence.

That is the promise of this recurring Friday slot: bring a topic, bring a question, and watch the details get worked out in public. For anyone trying to make the leap from almost-finished to cleanly finished, that kind of live access is the whole point.