Woodturning as meditation, storytelling, and personal growth. Sometimes all at once.
I'm Martin Saban-Smith. Professional turner, teacher, and firm believer that craft grows richer when it's shared.
Whether you're picking up a gouge for the first time or you've been making shavings for decades, you're in the right place. I’m not entirely about perfection, I’m about the process, the quiet satisfaction of woodturning and working with your hands.
Pull up a stool. Let me show you around.
WHAT CAN I HELP YOU WITH?
Learn to Turn
At my Woodturning School in Hampshire, you'll work on one of six full-size lathes with all tools provided. We've designed the space for learning with proper extraction, good lighting, plenty of room to work without feeling crowded.
Courses range from beginner sessions (where we'll have you making shavings within the first hour) to intermediate projects (boxes, bowls, hollow forms) to Sunday Studio Sessions for capable turners who want mentored practice time.
You'll leave with finished pieces you can be proud of, skills you can build on, and the confidence to keep turning when you get home.
Watch & Learn
Nearly 300 videos on YouTube, ranging from projects, techniques, tool reviews, and yes, the very occasional design disaster. I do what I can to stream live on Tuesday evenings (free), and offer occasional monthly paid demonstrations via Zoom for smaller audiences who want a more focused experience.
The live streams are informal, chatty sessions. Pull up a chair, bring tea, ask questions in the chat. It's the next best thing to being in the workshop and you don't have to sweep up the shavings afterwards!
Read the Book
Some pieces feel instantly right. Others don't.
Woodturning: Form and Formula is 180 pages of exploring how the Rule of Thirds and Golden Ratio can guide your eye and hand at the lathe. Seven step-by-step projects, design thinking that doesn't require a maths degree, and plenty of encouragement to experiment.
These aren't rigid rules. Rather, they're gentle guides toward pieces that feel harmonious. Once you start seeing proportion, you can't unsee it.
Join a Community
Woodturning can be a solitary craft. There's beauty and peace in that solitude. However, craft can also grow through connection and through seeing how others approach the same challenges.
Woodturning360 is an online club meeting twice monthly. Professional demonstrations on the first Monday, open discussion on the third. I have members from eleven countries with one shared passion. No hierarchy, no competition, just turners helping turners.
Membership is £6/month (less than a pint and a packet of crisps, and considerably more useful for your turning).
MY STORY & PHILOSOPHY
My journey and my thinking. Visitors are invested enough to read it.
The Beginning
It started at an agricultural fair in 2014.
I watched someone making garden dibbers on a lathe. Simple work done with quiet competence. Nothing flashy, nothing complicated. But something about it caught me. Whatever he did with his hands, the piece responded. No screens, no delays, no waiting for renders. Just a direct conversation between maker and material.
To cut a long story short, I asked if I could have a go, he said Yes. He helped, and that was it. I decided to be a woodturner.
I'd spent years as a photographer and designer, working with images and layouts. This felt fundamentally different. Ancient, even. The weight of the tool, the smell of fresh-cut timber, the way the wood spoke back through vibration and sound. I didn't understand it yet, but I knew I wanted to.
I went home, found my uncle's Myford Mystro lathe in storage, and made terrible bowls with enthusiasm that far exceeded skill. Those first pieces were honest disasters. Not great, but they were mine, and each one taught me something the next one needed.
That single decision quietly reshaped my entire life.
The Journey
Over the following decade, curiosity led to commitment, commitment to craft, craft to teaching, teaching to community.
I became a Registered Professional Turner (RPT) in 2018. I developed the Hampshire Sheen finishing range (now closed down). I founded Woodturning360 during lockdown, when the turning community needed new ways to connect. And now I run The Woodturning School with my colleague Les Thorne, welcoming new turners into this ancient craft every week.
Now, my first book, Woodturning: Form and Formula, explores how design principles can guide your eye and hand at the lathe that are the same principles that shaped my earlier career now applied to spinning wood.
How I Think About Woodturning
Process over perfection. Community over competition.
Woodturning is more than technique. It's about proportion, balance and form in both the wood and the turner. These aren't abstract concepts; they're what makes the difference between a piece that works and one that doesn't quite hit the mark. My photography background taught me about composition and the way the eye travels across an image. The same principles apply at the lathe.
I call mistakes 'design opportunities' not because I'm being precious, but because that's genuinely how I've learned to see them. A catch that takes too much wood? Now it's a chance to explore a different profile. A crack that appears during drying? Perhaps it becomes a feature, filled with resin or metal powder, telling the story of the wood's movement.
The Rule of Thirds and Golden Ratio aren't rigid rules; they're gentle guides toward pieces that feel right. You can break them deliberately once you understand them, and sometimes you should, too.
Finishing is where respect for craft shows. The last 10% of a piece takes 50% of the care. Sanding through the grits, building up the finish, polishing until it glows. That's where the magic happens. The piece comes alive.
And teaching? Teaching has never been a one-way exchange. Every class, every question has taught me as much as any piece of wood. My students have made me a better teacher by mainly by asking questions I couldn't answer, which sent me back to the lathe to find out and sometimes by testing my patience!
What gives me the most satisfaction? Seeing other people grow in their craft. Whether it's a student making their first box and realising they actually can do this, or someone writing to say a YouTube video gave them the courage to try something new.
Woodturning changed me. I'd like to help it change you too.