Martin Weinbrecht loves wood—especially when it’s spinning at high speed and he can shape it as he pleases. He passes on his knowledge of turnery at a workshop in Neckarsteinach. Some participants of his courses travel from as far as Iceland to learn the art of transforming a piece of wood into a bowl or a candleholder from him.
A soft humming emerges from a dark room. Dim light shines on a lathe that is already half buried under mountains of wood chips—from where the humming is coming. A man enters the room. He has grey hair and a grey beard, wears a blue-checked shirt and glasses. He inserts a piece of wood into the lathe, where it begins to rotate. The man touches the rotating wood with a metal tool. Clattering sounds arise from the lathe. Grooves appear and shavings fly through the air. Meanwhile, the humming sound has dissipated. The next thing that appears before this background is an annoyed and very tired little character, who starts to make all sorts of tools disappear. It’s practical that he has become invisible while doing so.
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Neulich in der Drechselwerkstatt (Recently in the woodturning workshop).
Does the scene sound familiar to you? No, it’s not from Master Eder and his Pumuckl. The film is called Neulich in der Drechselwerkstatt (Recently in the woodturning workshop) and the main characters are Martin Weinbrecht and the comic character Doc Drexler, who he created. Martin gave himself the film as a present for the 25th anniversary of his workshop in 2017. Martin just smiles when asked about the similarities to the well-known characters Master Eder and Pumuckl from the series. His workshop has something of the rustic cosiness of Master Eder’s carpentry workshop, too.
The first woodturning courses in Neckarsteinach took place in 1990—idyllically nestled in the slopes of Burgberg mountain between the Neckar river and the Odenwald. It all began as a leisure time activity. Martin worked as a vocational instructor at the Neckargemünd rehabilitation centre at the time. The centre is the Stephen-Hawking-Schule school now. Word quickly spread about his offer and his courses were fully booked for months. Martin decided to turn his hobby into a career.
Participants sometimes travel from abroad for the courses in the woodturning workshop.
Martin explains his craft with lots of patience.
The object of study is a candleholder—not only when it’s Christmas time.
All participants get to work on their individual lathe.
In which direction do the fibres in the wood run?
Martin shows how it’s done, step by step.
Even our author tries her hand at turnery.
On today’s agenda is a beginners’ course. Eleven participants have come to the two-day seminar: some from the region, some from far away. Josef, for example, came from Aargau to Neckarsteinach: “I took a course in Switzerland, but it wasn’t nearly as good.” Martin reports that a group even as far as from Iceland comes to the Rhine Rift Valley every year. “They usually book a two-day course, spend a few days in the region and then fly back.” Men and women, 14-year-olds and 78-year-olds, gardeners or programmers, from nearby Heidelberg or far-away Hamburg—the courses are diverse groups of people. Martin also offers woodturning courses for people with accessibility issues.
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Everyone can learn woodturning. At least, when they are instructed accordingly, as our film shows…
While the first snow of the year is falling on the fir trees of Burgberg mountain, everyone has gathered around the lathe in the middle of the workshop. Two candleholders are on the wooden table. The cone-shaped one was turned by the participants yesterday. Today, they will make a tealight holder. Martin leans over the lathe, inserts a piece of wood in it and sets it in motion at the push of a button. “I’ll show you how to apply the Engelshaarschnitt (angel’s haircut) method now,” he says in a deep, calm voice. “You mustn’t use force here; your knuckles mustn’t turn white. Do it gently, as if you want to caress the wood.” He gently applies the tool to the rotating piece of wood. A few shavings come off with a buzzing sound and twist into fine curls—angel hair, in other words.
A tealight holder is created here—by applying gentle touches and the angel’s haircut.
“Woodturning has nothing to do with carpentry,” Martin explains later. “They are two different crafts.” They only have one thing in common—the material. And Martin has loved wood since he was a child. After school, he decided to train as a carpenter. But he had another passion, too: the sea. Martin grew up in Flensburg, where his family had a sailing boat. “I found sailing much more exciting than school.” He used to spend every free minute on the Baltic Sea as a teenager, and he dreamt of becoming a captain. He turned his dream into reality, started a second apprenticeship, went to sea for the first time—and returned disillusioned. “Life on a cargo ship had nothing at all to do with my dream.” His comrades used to drink and play cards while he was sitting in his cabin knitting. “I just didn’t fit in there.”
Captain Martin Weinbrecht only steers the lathe nowadays.
His girlfriend was living in Freiburg at the time. When he returned, he held in his hands a letter from her in which she ended the relationship. Martin decided to go south and try to fix what could be fixed. “But there was nothing left to fix.” However, he liked Freiburg and eventually met students and got involved in the peace movement. He stayed and worked as a caretaker at a students’ residence setting up a workshop in the basement of the residence. “I wanted to tie in with my teaching profession and do something creative”. He began to make children’s toys and sell them on markets. The only thing he could never get right was the wheels of the cars. So he went to a turner and watched him shape a piece of wood into a ball. “I just stood there and thought to myself: This is what I want to do.” And so he did, quickly realizing that he couldn’t make a living from making and selling wooden toys.
Rough woodworking? Not at all!
Martin decided to change tack once again. “I wanted to do something that involved wood and people.” He asked the employment office if there was such a profession. They advised him to become an occupational educator. He moved to Heidelberg to train. During his first internship in a psychiatric hospital he met Anke, who worked there. She became his wife. They bought the house at Burgberg mountain and set up the woodturning studio together. There is now a team of four working there and giving courses, among them Dirk Bastian and Markus Peuser. There are general courses for beginners and ones for advanced students. And there are themed courses in which participants turn wood pieces into pens or pepper mills.
Anke is the heart and soul of the woodturning workshop and supplies the course participants with coffee, tea and pastries.
Dirk and Markus have a calm way of teaching the skill of turning. They have great patience when explaining their craft to people who usually sit at a desk all day. And they have a great deal of social conscience. Dirk will fly to Nepal in spring again. He has been there before and helped set up a workshop together with the Nepal Youth Foundation. The turnery in Neckarsteinach donated the equipment. Dirk will show the apprentices in Nepal how to turn pepper mills for sale this time.
Talking shop: Markus Peuser and Dirk Bastian.
“Oh no, I’ve made a Nürnberger (a Nuremberg mistake),” says Jens, looking at the deep notch in the piece of wood that wants to become a tealight holder. Turners call their mistakes Nürnberger—after the city that used to be a centre for woodturning. Mistakes can happen easily when a piece of wood is rotating at over 2,000 revolutions per minute. Martin is with him immediately and tilts his head and says: “No, that’s a decorative element! Just make a second notch in it!” The participants quickly learn that turning means constantly balancing the application of sufficient, but not too much, force and acquiring the right feeling for it. But what turning is above all, is that it is a wonderful feeling to watch a piece of wood gradually transforming into a round tealight holder by skilfully applying one single tool.
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