Macho turner's aside . . . People who announce that there is only one way are, well... boring.
If a tool is sharp enough you can turn at 100 rpm. I find that very high speeds limit the turner's choices.
Marc
Sorry Marc, but you wrong, on two counts.
First you come across as deliberately intending to inflame or demean with the "macho" and "boring" statement. If you don't agree with something or want to contradict something, do it objectively, - but don't inflame by throwing a personalizing term at individuals that seems to be deliberately intended as derogatory. I do believe there is a rule on this forum about deliberately doing this to others.
Stick to the issues! You do great work and you offer great suggestions and help and that is appreciated by many and by me, but please stay with the objective.
Second. What you wrote in itself is misleading because of the information that it leaves out. The "100 RPM" and "sharp enough" are two variables of at least 4, and to limit those two in the argument is by themselves misleading and will not do what you suggest.
100 RPM on the lip of a 14 in bowl is quite different than a 1/2 in diameter pen! Lumping all turning together is misleading.
At 100 RPM with even laser?/cnc sharpened chisels, "feed rate" IS affected to a considerable degree. Not everyone can feed at 1/1000 of in inch control into "iron wood" or "soft pine" so that there are no "catches". Steadiness/FIRM grasp pressure changes MUST be made and the kind of turning needed on pens, at the diameter of pens, requires more control than most people are capable of!
It is a fact that speed alone affects cuts as Mesquite man described. So why don't manufacturers make 100 rpm planers, which would certainly be safer? Why do the faster RPM planers make smoother cuts?
While the pict below is not pen turning, it was a test done by a resident engineer on a woodworking forum that I frequent daily: Same bit, well sharpened, soft wood, different speeds, Drill press, same approximate feed rate, different results according to speed.
Slower speeds in turning require finer feeding rates for the same chisel and stronger firmer grips, or tear out / catches will happen that would not - if the speed were faster.
The wood in this pen below was not sanded even one bit but was turned at around 3500 RPM. Sanding would have smeared the "dots". These could NOT have been turned at 100 RPM by a normal person no matter how sharp the chisel is. (The finish was sanded, but not the wood.)