A turner is a craftsman who shapes wood or metal on a lathe. A lathe is a machine that spins the material round very fast while the worker holds a cutting tool against it — that is how you get a perfectly round chair leg, a bowl, or a metal rod of an exact size. So a wood turner makes bowls and chair legs; a metal turner works in a factory or workshop cutting metal parts. In modern industry the job title you will see more often is machinist, but turner is still used, especially in Britain, and wood turner is very much alive as the name of a craft hobby. Two other things share this spelling and are worth knowing so you are not confused. First, in American kitchens a turner is the flat tool you use to turn food over in a pan — what most people simply call a spatula or a fish slice. Second, Turner with a capital T is a very common family name; the painter J. M. W. Turner is the famous one, and there is a British art prize named after him. That is not an accident: like Smith, Baker, and Cooper, the surname started as the job. So a very ordinary word gave a very famous name. This is a low-frequency word for a learner. Recognise it; you are unlikely to need to say it.