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How many Woodturners in America?

Russell Neyman

Russell Neyman

Joined
Mar 4, 2015
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United States
I wonder how many woodturners, amateurs and professionals together, there are in the United States.
 
Define woodturner. I help with a woodturning booth at the Wood Show in Atlanta to steer turners to an AAW chapter. When someone showed some interest in the demo being done on a mini lathe, I would ask are you a turner? I always got three answers:
1 - No,
2 - yes, and
3 - "I have a lathe" spoken while looking down at their feet.

Seems like I had more of the third response than the second.
 
A lot. Based on the clubs I'm in and many I visit not even a quarter are AAW members. I meet turners all the time who don't even belong to a club. Al will have to give us an accurate total but are t we over 15,000 strong now. I don't think a guess of 60 to 80 thousand would not be out of line
 
john lucas said:
A lot. Based on the clubs I'm in and many I visit not even a quarter are AAW members. I meet turners all the time who don't even belong to a club. Al will have to give us an accurate total but are t we over 15,000 strong now. I don't think a guess of 60 to 80 thousand would not be out of line
Click to expand...

John's numbers are pretty good. I would think 80,000 who turn 5 hours a month or more is a reasonable estimate

You asked about US turners. I would suggest that it makes more sense to talk about US and Canadian turners.
We have no wall to the north.
Our chapters here in Florida have have a bunch of Canadian members. After next month, we won't see most of them again until November. On the hilarious side, A few years ago our Florida legislature in a fit of xenophobia passed a law that did not allow Canadiens to drive in our state. They somehow did not consider that yes Canada is another country. So they did not enforce the law for a year until the legislature could undo it.

AAW memberships are about 15k. About half belong to at least one chapter
the above number includes 700 Canadiens and a couple hundred from Europe, Asia, Australia, and NZ

AAW chapters reported about 23,000 members in 2013 ( folks belonging to multiple chapters get counted for each chapter)
About 1/2 are AAW members. Also 1500 of this chapter members belong to Canadian chapters and about a 100 belong to chapters in Australia, Taiwan, and japan

So 14,000 AAW members in the us. + 11,000 chapter members that are not AAW MEMBERS

25,000 AAW affiliated in the U.S. Some number of these folks are not woodturners and don't own a lathe....

Then there are lots and lots of turners without an AAW affiliation.
So 80,000 is a reasonable number.

Al
 
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It would be interesting to find out how many lathes are sold in the US, and probably the rest of the world. I think turning has shown a huge increase in popularity in recent years. From my many years of doing arts and crafts shows, it was amazing how many times I would hear, "I turned this really ugly plate in high school, and my mom still has it. She just loves it." Also, "I turned a few things in wood shop, and it was so much fun." The new lathes are easier to use, and the tools and instruction are so much better. Lots of baby boomers who are looking to have fun making a mess.....

robo hippy
 
In my area -- Puget Sound -- there are at least 1500 active turners in the AAW clubs within 100 miles of my shop, so I know there are plenty. I suspect there are other regions that are "hotbeds" of turning, too.
 
These maps of where AAW members live show the AAW densities from 2013
The areas where 50% of the members live are created using a " heat map" raster analysis.
Each pixel is assigned a value based on the member location distances to the pixel.
Members are counted within various contour levels.
 

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Cpt Eddie has more than 20k subscribers to his woodturning channel on YouTube. Based on the detail I see on my YouTube channel, probably more than 90% are in the US. Based on my clubs I doubt if more than 20% of the membership watch woodturning videos on YouTube, much less subscribe. Again, depending on how you define a woodturner ( 5hrs a month turning I would think would certainly qualify as a woodturner but so could less), I think the numbers could well be higher than 80k.
 
hockenbery said:
These maps of where AAW members live show the AAW densities from 2013
The areas where 50% of the members live are created using a " heat map" raster analysis.
Each pixel is assigned a value based on the member location distances to the pixel.
Members are counted within various contour levels.
Click to expand...
Al,
I can see the dot that represents our club! Way cool!

Dean Center
NRWG, Bozeman, MT
 
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