Beginning turners or average turners who have been on vacation, or sick, burnt out, working overtime or doing mandatory holiday honeydo's might want to warm up on scrap wood before turning expensive blanks.
You can learn technique and method from videos and books and even rcw, but warming up is fun and good practice, even when turning regularly. My routine includes most all the tools and cuts I'm likely to inflict on a defenseless chunk of wood. It is most important that I wear face protection and use sharp tools.
I keep a bunch of 2X4 scraps from studs etc. but most any scrap would serve for warming up. I cut them into about 10 in. blanks and deliberately leave them as rectangles for better practice in seeing the ghost while rounding with a spindle roughing gouge.
I center by eye between spur and revolving centers and except for about
2 in. left as is at the headstock, I rough to round, then smooth trying both skew and shear scraper. Leaving about 3/4 in. at the tailstock, I mark off the rounded spindle in between with a pencil and make fast & loose shallow 1 in. beads with a skew.I convert the beads to coves with a spindle gouge. Then I remove some coves with a skew and some with a spindle gouge and make a long smooth downhill curve then a straight taper, again practicing with both skew and gouge.
Now I peel the tail down with a skew and keep facing off the end with the tip of the long point til I can do it without a catch. Then I turn some evenly spaced 1/4 in. beads along the taper with a detail gouge and burn border accents with a sliver of ebony.
Moving to the headstock, I make a chucking tenon with a 1/4 in. cut off tool and behind that I gouge a pommel followed with an ogee. Then back at the tail end I gouge an inch or two of extra thin fragile stem and finally back at the ogee I separate the spindle with a thin cut off tool and force myself to throw it (the spindle) in the trash can.
I chuck up what's left on its tenon and drill a short hole in the end grain with a small gouge. I use a shallow gouge to hollow out with a show-off back cut, then I try to clean up the mess with a square scraper. I don't mind practicing sharpening, but I sure don't like to practice sanding.
For me warming up is fun, takes very little time and pretty much gets me back to my usual expertise at ineptness. My problem is throwing the pre game warm ups away. They often look better than my game time masterpieces. Besides, there isn't much that a Scot can bring himself to part with.
I've thought about drilling a hole for a screw chuck or a dovetail for a scroll chuck in the wide side of some 4 in. 2X4's to warm up cutting side grain, but my bowls usually have enough waste wood to practice on before making the finish cuts.
IMHO, using all the tools I have that can make all the cuts I'm likely to need by turning fast and furious; freely with no timidity and with unrestrained (even if unwarranted) confidence on scrap wood while wearing a face mask is the key to a good warm up. This is not a chore and ought to be fun .
Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter