Welcome

Founded

Founded on April 21st, 1994 the South Puget Sound Woodturners is in the top 10 clubs in the American Association of Woodturners (AAW).

Members

Our members range from beginner to internationally acclaimed professionals. Our interests range from penmaking to bowls, turned ornaments to hollow vessels, spindles to platters.

Demonstrations

Attend our monthly membership meetings and you will find demonstrations on material selection, tool usage, segmenting, wood coloring, ebonizing, and lots of turning techniques.

Mini-Symposium

Twice a year we have a mini-symposium where members demonstrate anything you could imagine.

Another great benefit for our members is our “Sawdust Sessions”. This is a hands on session with mentors from the club. This is an amazing one-on-one opportunity to improve your turning skills.

Visit

There are so many more benefits and learning opportunities to membership in the South Puget Sound Woodturners. Come and visit our next meeting and see what turning is all about!

February Demo – Terry Broberg, Epoxy Rimmed Bowl

Like many woodturners, I was exposed to a lathe briefly in high school. It was fun to use the different tools and start to understand how they worked. I moved on in life and didn’t start seriously turning until about 8 years ago.

My first lathe was a ShopSmith. I set it up and used a very awkward chuck to make a lighthouse. It was so fun to see the thing shape and develop as the lathe spun around. I was hooked. On a trip to Sumner Woodworking, I learned about our club. After the first meeting, I knew that I was at a place where my skills could be developed and enhanced. The Sawdust Sessions are fantastic!

Over the years I have made lighthouses, hollow forms, bottle stoppers, etc. Two lathes later and I don’t know how much money I have spent; I have settled on making mainly bowls. Each piece of wood presents its own challenges and opportunities as I create a variety of sized and styled pieces.

Resins entered my shop a few years ago. I started filling gaps and cracks and now play with other ways to add color and features to my works.

My demonstration will talk about types of resins, adding in color and solids, as well as how I bring the bowl rim to life. It will basically be a show and tell session with time for many questions.

Let’s learn together.

January President’s Challenge Winner

We are so excited to tell you about our January President’s Challenge recipient, Ethan Green. As we have had the pleasure to see some beautiful pieces of art he has brought to our show-and-tell last year, the most memorable to date, the rose root ball vase. In January, the President’s Challenge was a square rimmed bowl. All of the submissions were stunning but there was one bowl that stood out above the rest, a beautifully mastered work of art made from Big Leaf Maple with extraordinary fiddleback with spalting and a gentle curve leading into a bowl. Stunning for the eye, inspired by the works of Richard Raffan, The Art of Turned Bowls and his information about curves; using a catenary curve for his bowl you can see it looks like a bowl in a bowl as the edges gently curve upwards with a bowl in the center with a walnut oil finish.

You can learn more about Ethan in the February newsletter.

AAW International Syposium

This year the AAW Symposium will be held in Portland. This is a great opportunity for us to be able to attend as it is so close. SPSW members, get your secret code for a $40 registration discount.

January Demo – Eileen Collins

I learned about Fiber Reactive Dyes as a Textile Arts Major in college, using them extensively to study and understand color and what role that plays in the design process. After graduation from the University of Washington, I went back to college, getting myself an Industrial Engineering degree. I worked at Boeing, including several years in the Development Center and Paint Hangars, and went to school to learn how to use a paint sprayer and how to paint airplanes. When I pursued my engineering degree, I never imagined that my art background would be such an integral part of my thinking and enable me to be a better engineer. The combination of art and engineering makes me very inspired to make beautiful pieces of art while considering fit, form and function in every aspect of development.

In 2012, I bought my first lathe and began turning wood. When I retired a few years ago, I began coloring my wood, graduating to a larger lathe, and have explored many options in coloring wood.

Although many of my pieces are functional, it is the art bowls which people find interesting and unique. My goal in coloring is to preserve the presence of the wood, and enhance its beauty, not cover it up. Many of my finished pieces have no coloring. Why is that? The beauty of these pieces stands on their own, without enhancements.

Professional? Not by some standards, if you measure it by income. Most of my work involves making bowls and art pieces for local charity fundraisers including Empty Bowls and Dunn Gardens. I have sold a few things but do not turn wood to make money. I have turned things as small as lace bobbins for a doll house (1 cm long, 0.017” diameter), and much larger pieces such as 18” salad bowls and art bowls.

I was told one time, many years ago, that I am not an artist because I do not make money doing it. I was very young but had self-confidence. My response was, “I am a true artist, because I am not limited to making something that will sell, but making what I want that has quality, beauty, uniqueness, vision and meaning. It doesn’t matter how long it takes me to make it.”

December Meeting/Potluck

Here are the potluck food assignments and raffle outline for the Christmas Party:

Potluck Assignments:
A-G Salad or Side Dish
H-O Dessert
P-Z Main Dish

Raffle Outline:
1. Everyone in attendance gets one ticket for the wood lot and one raffle ticket for the
general prize raffle.
2. Additional prize drawings will be conducted for those who have submitted raffle
tickets with your name – in the tin for helping at meetings.
3. Gift Exchange – If you brought something for the gift exchange, please put it on the
gift exchange table and get a ticket from the bowl, make sure you leave one half for your
drawing time. We encourage you to bring a turned piece (made by you), but that is not
a requirement, many of you have multiple talents that you would like to share.