Joseph Gereige is among the new members at QatART, the handmade community of Qatar. He stands out for his beautiful wood creations made using wood-turning.

Wood-turning is the name given to the craft that turns a block of wood into a desired shape or object. This is done by pinning the block between two spinning points. These points make the wood ‘turn’ and with the help of specialised chisels, the wood is given the desired shape.

Gereige said that he was always a creative person and his hobbies include cycling, fixing bicycles and making artistic crafts from bicycle parts, photography, and only recently, wood-turning. A civil engineer by profession, he got started two years ago when he wanted to gift a utility knife with a wood handle to a nephew and ended up making it himself.

“I love to create and the creativity kicked in further when my wife gifted me a small wood-turning machine. I created a lot of objects with it such as a small racing car, a hydroplane. But later, I decided to make my own lathe (wood-turning machine), but there were limitations. Wood-turning was slowly turning into a passion, so I decided to go big and I bought my first wood-turning machine, and here I am. I must say I owe it all to my nephew and the encouragement of my wife, and her tolerance for all the dust and the noise I make,” he said with a smile.

Wood-turning is a technique that takes years to master and it was the same for Gereige. He spent hours on YouTube, watching instructional videos, from all over the world and all eras.

“I have literally watched every video if I may say from classic Japanese wood-turners and manual wood-turning in China, to some black and white German videos and the most modern videos from the 90s used till today from the USA, Canada.”

One also needs to understand the differences between hard wood, soft wood and how to handle them. He said to master the technique, general wood-crafting skills are really helpful, like knowledge about cutting, planing and sanding.

“There are many steps involved in mastering wood-turning, like how to put a wooden piece on the lathe, how to chuck it, which tool to use. Each step requires a different tool and a different skill,” he said.

He now creates wooden toys such as spin tops, cars, airplanes, trucks, kitchen utensils like plates, coffee cups and presses, dough-cutters, forks, spoons, bowls, vases and utility items for crocheting, thread bowl, crocheting needles, chandeliers, hanging lights, earrings, bracelets, rings and boxes for these accessories. He hopes to soon start creating musical instruments. It took him almost a year to start feeling confident to work on the lathe.”I still feel there is a lot to learn.”

He spends 2-3 hours daily on his craft as besides the turning, there are a lot of things to take care of like purchasing wood, tools, designing a new piece, cleaning of the workshop and sharpening tools.
Most of the equipment he uses is bought from Qatar, while some of it is sourced online. He uses different types of wood for different products some of which he imports. He said,”A fine piece of wood like Olive wood, Ash or Beech is the best for kitchen utensils. Olive wood I get from Greece, Beech and Ash I can find from local suppliers. I get the wood in square blocks; I need to cut down the piece in an octagonal shape and to the correct size before I turn it. The wood has to be free from chemicals, cracks and any anomalies.”

Being a civil engineer helped him with his hobby.”The ability to design, the 3D perception, the durability of the wood and in general the common sense of materials, those were there, but not the turning skills,” he said.

Last week was only the second time that Gereige participated at a market but the response has been amazing. Most of his goods start at QR40 and go up to QR1,000.”I have already got special requests for plates, coffee cups, colourful tops and toy mice. But I am open to any new stuff. The internet is full of wood-turning pieces. I would love to try new pieces that I haven’t done before, this will widen my skills and productivity.”

Passion for what he does reflects in everything that he creates.”Our jobs, the way of life, sometimes becomes stressful. Creating a new thing with your hands is an escape from reality, it clears your mind. Most of all, it fires the imagination and it’s so nice that what I create can draw a smile on the faces of people, both grown-ups and children.”

When asked if he draws inspiration from any artist in particular, he said,”The techniques that I have learned from the internet are from some big names in the industry of wood-turning, who have reached the level of being artists, as they went beyond making wooden platters or toys and they created real artistic pieces that went straight to museums and galleries; names like David Ellsworth or Ashly Harwood, and I look up to them.”

Gereige is still experimenting with his new-found passion and said that he hopes to be able to create a sounding bowl.”When I saw it I was stunned. It is a musical instrument and I am looking forward to turning one,” he said.

“I hope to inspire people to start such hobbies. So far, it’s a hobby to me. It can’t replace work in terms of making a living, but it would be great if what I love doing will become my source of living, but this means complete dedication, which is not possible at the moment.”

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As the nation comes together on Veterans Day to honor those who have served in the military, a group of Tucson veterans will pay tribute to their comrades while they give back to the community in creative and thoughtful ways.

Today, some of them will attend parades and ceremonies as they take pensive moments to think of fellow veterans and loved ones who fought in wars.

Later, they will go back to their workshops as members of the Southern Arizona Woodturners Association or the Desert Woodcrafters, where they will shape wood into canes for needy veterans or into wooden pens given to the recipients of Purple Heart medals.

Their hands work wood into boxes to hold colorful beads for seriously ill children. Some make wooden toys to give to children at Christmas, while others spend time making display cases to hold interment flags for veterans.

Meet veterans Mike Phillips, Paul Swane, George Lewis and Dan Williams, whose love for shaping or carving wood takes them to their shops for hours each week. It is there, in the midst of machines and sawdust, that they are content creating for others.

Phillips, 71, lovingly looked at a display case he made for the interment flag of his father, Bill, who died at age 89 in 2010. “He served in the 3rd Armored Cavalry during World War II’s Battle of the Bulge. I learned patriotism from him,” said Phillips, in a voice choked with emotion. “My dad saw a lot of blood and friends who died. I am named after one of his friends,” Phillips said.

He said his father was in a unit that liberated prison camps in Germany and did not talk much about the horror he witnessed, including piles of bodies and starving, injured prisoners.

Phillips, who served in the Army’s 13th Armored Cavalry in Germany in the 1960s, said he is honored to make flag display cases. “Veterans Day is one of the most important holidays that we observe,” said Phillips, a retired auto-parts manager who learned to build custom furniture from his father. Years later, he taught himself how to turn wood on a lathe, using chisels to shape the wood.

“It is magical to get a piece of wood on the lathe. It amazes me what colors you are going to find inside the wood as you work the piece,” said Phillips, who also crafts Christmas ornaments, bowls and platters for family gifts.

Spending hours in the wood shop is pure enjoyment for Swane, 76, who joined the Army in 1964 and worked as a supply sergeant for the Army National Guard until 1969 in Sturgis, South Dakota. He later worked for a company selling children’s books and toys, climbing to sales management positions until his retirement, moving to SaddleBrooke north of Tucson 12 years ago.

Swane bought a lathe and became serious about shaping and turning wood before he researched and joined the woodcrafters and woodturners organizations. He said he is filled with satisfaction giving to others, a trait he learned from his father, who lived through the Depression.

Swane said he is proud of the men’s accomplishments in helping with the associations’ projects. The local groups have crafted more than 16,000 wooden pens for troops overseas since 2002 and make about 200 pens yearly from purpleheart wood for Arizona veterans honored with the Purple Heart medal.

Tucson native Lewis said projects take him into his shop where he spends hours crafting with no outside interference. The 80-year-old joined the Navy Reserve in the 1950s and is now a retired Southern Pacific Railroad worker who finds peace making furniture for family and crafting pens, toys and boxes for the Beads of Courage program.

Lewis was among the artisans who recently gathered in midtown at Ken Tower’s shop. Tower, a retired Flowing Wells High School woodworking and shop teacher, found pleasure showing his waddling duck, penguin and playhouse furniture for children. He has mentored hundreds of students over 30 years and continues sharing his knowledge with fellow crafters.

One who is grateful for their talents is nurse Jean Gribbon, executive director of Beads of Courage, a charity headquartered at 3230 N. Dodge Blvd. She said she is grateful for the artists’ unique boxes for the organization’s arts and medicine programs for children coping with cancer and other serious illnesses. Each bead symbolizes courage and marks milestones in a child’s medical treatments.

“The last three years we have worked with the American Association of Woodturners,” said Gribbon, explaining that chapters across the country make the special boxes. “Woodturning is a very old art form. Each piece is original, and they are just beautiful. Families and children love the boxes, which I look at as a sacred vessel.” Some children receive up to 500 beads a year during their treatment journey.

The Tucson associations reached out to Gribbon, and since 2014 local craftsmen have created more than 300 boxes for the Beads of Courage program. “We certainly do not receive enough boxes for every child to receive one, but numbers are increasing,” said Gribbon.

Globally the organization serves 60,000 children a year, and it receives about 3,000 boxes annually.

Williams understands the needs of the children, and he turns to his woodcarving experience of 20 years to make finials for the lids of the Beads of Courage boxes. “I use pure imagination to create and paint cartoon and children’s book characters,” said Williams, 75, a native of Detroit who joined the Army in 1960 and served in the military police. He retired from General Motors and moved to SaddleBrooke in 2004.

“I do it for the kids. I love to see their smiles,” said the woodcarver, whose fascination with miniature carousel horses started him on this crafting journey.

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What do you see when you imagine a weaver or a wood turner? Most likely a woman at a loom and a man at the lathe.

That will change when you visit “Gender Bend: Women in Wood, Men at the Loom” at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton. It’s an exhibit filled with beautiful and intriguing works made by male weavers and female wood turners.

“There continue to be cultural presuppositions about the masculine and feminine nature of applied handwork, and how they correlate to artistic and practical value,” wrote museum curator Michael McMillan in the introductory panel. “It is the hope of Fuller Craft Museum that (this) exhibition (will) transform the title ‘women wood turners’ into simply ‘wood turners’ and the same respectively for male fiber artists.”

Just as the artisans’ genders may surprise, so too do their creations.

The woven works don’t just have colorful patterns; some are tapestry-like landscapes and portraits made from wool, cotton, silk and metallic thread.

The works in wood are not just bowls or vessels. There are ones that look like seeds and fruits, a ceramic teapot and ancient rock art. The woods that were used include mahogany, redwood, African blackwood and others from around the world.

In “Wetland,” Urban Jupena wove a scene reminiscent of Monet’s “Garden at Giverny,” but it actually is the view of a red walking bridge over a wooded and green wetland outside her window.

“It is about making something just for its own beauty – no political or earth-shattering statement – just a tapestry,” Jupena wrote in the exhibit catalog.

“NYNY,” by Klaus Anselm, is a boldly colored geometric weaving of purple, pink and orange skyscrapers. It’s as though the surfaces are reflecting the setting sun.

“Young Icarus,” by exhibit co-curator Jon Eric Riis, is a rear view of a standing naked man in contemplation, and next to him are two large glistening wings made of blue and yellow feathers. It’s a thought-provoking work that, according to Riis, asks, “Did Icarus (who in Greek myth plunged into the sea after he flew too close to the sun) know of his impending doom?”

“This is the tragic theme of failure caused by foolish pride, which unfortunately seems to exist well into the 21st century,” Riis wrote in the exhibit catalog.

On a lighter, humorous note, “Lip Service,” by Dixie Biggs, is a black-painted cherrywood teapot with a spout that looks like a bright-red puckered mouth and handle like a tube of red lipstick. Many sensual lips decorate its side, making the piece look like it’s made of clay.

“Drying Apple and Ladybug” is a cross section of a boxwood apple, the delicate, flower-shaped core of which holds a tiny ladybug.

“My work points out little things in nature that most of us tend to disregard during our busy lives, and might present a small story which arouses quiet memories,” wrote wood turner Janel Jacobson.

Hayley Smith found her inspiration for “Handful” at Canyon de Chelly in Arizona, where the walls were covered in 700-year-old handprints made by the Anasazi people. She inlaid overlapping dark and light handprints onto a round base, which seems to call out to be spun so that the three hands blur into one.

“I experienced a powerful urge to connect with these people, to place my hand palm to palm with the past,” she wrote.

If you go:

What: “Gender Bend: Women in Wood, Men at the Loom”

Where: Fuller Craft Museum, 455 Oak St., Brockton

When: Daily, through March 11. Closed Mondays.

Information: 508-588-6000; fullercraft.org

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If you have ever witnessed woodturning, you would probably agree that it’s mesmerising to watch.

It’s also mesmerising to do, but also a lot harder than the pros make it look.

Leamington woodturner Colin Parkinson took me on as his student for an afternoon, and together we created a gorgeous wooden bowl.

Colin has been woodturning for nine years, but has had an interest in building things and working with wood since he was a boy.

“When I was little I had to go and chop the firewood, and I’d sit there with the skinning knife and carve planes and boats and things into the kindling.

“I always got an earful,” he said.

Now he is an engineer at Bertolini Pumps and Sprayers in Cambridge, and enjoys woodturning on the side.

He handed me a piece of wood that was somewhat bowl shaped. It was my job to turn it into an actual bowl, with his help of course.

It was macrocarpa, which could be a soft wood to work with.

“Each wood is different to work with. It all dries different, it all has different grains, and it all grows differently,” he said.
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After I’d put on my safety helmet, he attached the wood to the lathe for me. He owns one of four of these types of lathes in the country.

We started with the outside of the bowl. He showed me how to to position the chisel, and gave me voice prompts as I was doing it.

Once we got the shape we wanted, it was time to sand it down.

Sanding it made it feel smoother.

“You can’t shape it with just sandpaper, it’s a finishing tool not a shaping tool,” he said.

We started with the finest grade, and went up in stages until it was as smooth as we wanted.

Time to polish the outside, then work on the inside of the bowl – which was considerably harder than the outside.

I had what he calls a “catch” which is where the chisel gets caught on a spin, and makes a mark across the bowl.

It was definitely a mistake, but one that Colin easily fixed for me with some more shaping.

Once the inside shaped and polished, it was time to remove the “chuck” which is the lump at the bottom of the bowl.

He re-attached it so the outside of the bowl was facing us, and we chiselled it away quickly.

He then took the tool off me, and did two small circles underneath the bowl.

“It’s to show you care, and to show you considered it,” he explained.

“Now it’s time to make it your own.”

He provided me with a selection of what I would call “wood stamps” that make a print in the wood.

I chose one and took it around the base of the bowl, then signed my name at the bottom.

The entire thing took us about four hours. He would knock one out quicker on his own, but it was my first time.

He said it was great for a first attempt, though he did have to help me a fair bit.

I couldn’t get over how soft and smooth it was to touch, and how great the freshly cut wood smelled.

This was one of the hardest Reporter Challenges I had experienced, but also the most satisfying.

Thank you Colin, for taking time out of your day to show me the ropes.

If you ever get the chance to try woodturning, I highly recommend it.

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Topsy Turvy! Women in Turning Project for AAW’s 2018 EOG Auction

Next year’s AAW Educational Opportunity Grant Project is titled Topsy Turvy! The project for the 2018 EOG Auction gives our participants the opportunity to explore an easy exercise on the lathe to create a spin top. Participants are encouraged to submit a spin top for Topsy Turvy! There is a limit of one donation per person. The spin tops must be done on the lathe. Spin tops are different from a Trompo or Whipping Top-these are tops, which are spun by winding a length of string around the body, and launching it so that it lands and spins. Trompos or Whipping Tops are NOT to be submitted. Tops can be carved, wood burned or colored  but should be able to spin. We are including pictures of the spinning tops we will accept, and an image of a Whipping Top that we will NOT accept. The tops will be presented grouped together in a custom-designed display, and because of this there is a size restriction: tops can be no larger than 3.5” tall x 2.5” wide x 2.5” deep. To have time for professional photos and to take advantage of early publicity for promotion to potential buyers, your contribution must be delivered by January 31, 2018. Work should be shipped to: Tania Radda, 1519 W Augusta Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85021. Put your thinking caps on and let’s make this another fun and successful project! Any questions about the project can be sent to Tania Radda, email: radda@cox.net

 

Jeremy Williams has been working with wood since February 2011. Though he is mostly self-taught, he attends some demonstrations and woodworking expositions to keep his mind fresh and the ideas flowing.
 
According to Jeremy, woodturning is a sweet science. It is a narrow, but deep niche in the world of woodworking. Often a piece is not suitable for anything except burning or turning, and the most beautiful things can be made from wood that was destined for the fireplace. His approach to woodturning is inspired by Michelangelo. He said the final piece was enclosed in the block of stone, and he only had to remove everything that wasn’t it. The unique qualities of wood are almost always also exemplified in the woodturner himself. In some ways, woodturning goes against some of the general basics of other types of woodworking. Jeremy loves turning against the grain.

He prefers shapes and designs that feature gently sloping curves and give the impression that they extend beneath the table. He uses any kind of wood from domestic to foreign types and from fresh cut wood to pieces rescued from the burn pile. Within trees, wood often distorts itself and creates burls, crotch wood, knots, etc. While these occurrences are often considered undesirable, Jeremy enjoys turning pieces with these “imperfections” to show what lies beneath. His pieces are never stained, just finished to bring out the natural colors and grain of the wood.  

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Fifteen years ago, Summerfield’s Joe Coupe walked into a classroom at Frances Wakeland Elementary School in Bradenton to fix a teacher’s computer.

But what he noticed first was a second-grade student, his head on a table, fast asleep while the other children completed activities. He sensed something was wrong.

“(The teacher) said he was living at Salvation Army because his parents were in jail,” Coupe said, adding the boy couldn’t sleep at night because of the noise at the facility. “His only meals were from the school.”

It changed Coupe’s perspective.

“After that, anytime you want to do something good for kids, I’m in,” Coupe said.

The Food Bank of Manatee is giving Coupe another opportunity.

He is using his woodturning talents, as are other members of the Sarasota Woodturners, to carve wooden bowls for the Empty Bowls fundraiser Nov. 3 in Lakewood Ranch.

“This event is all about the symbolic meaning of soup and bread and represents all the empty bowls within the community,” said Stephanie Grepling, marketing director for Meals on Wheels Plus of Manatee, which operates the Food Bank. “Having soup and bread can mean the difference between having a nutritional meal or not.”

According to the Food Bank, one in four children and one in seven adults in Manatee County are considered “food insecure,” meaning there is at least a $20 per week shortfall to feed that person. That’s 14.1% of Manatee’s 343,700 population.

“That’s a critical decision between bills or medicine or rent,” Grepling said. “The need is critical right now. The money that is collected (from Empty Bowls) and all proceeds go to The Food Bank of Manatee.”

The Food Bank distributes food to 115 pantries and food kitchens.

For the Empty Bowls event, guests enjoy a meal of soup and bread and can take home a commemorative bowl to help remember there are empty bowls to be filled. Most of the bowls are ceramic and have been decorated by local artists or individuals via paint parties.

However, the more than 150 bowls created by the woodturners will be reserved for individuals who purchase VIP tickets to the event.

Sarasota Woodturners club president Tom Falcone, who attended an Empty Bowls event last year, said his group partnered with The Food Bank because 97 cents of every dollar raised by The Food Bank goes into programming.

Advantage Lumber, in Sarasota, donated wood for the project.

 

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Forget calling a handyman for home construction and repairs. More and more women are picking up power tools and not only doing their own home repairs, they’re designing and building their own furniture, tiling floors and getting their hands into home projects once considered a man’s work.

Retired educator Jan Wee moved to Green Valley eight years ago from Washington state and brought with her a passion for working with wood. No stranger to getting her hands dirty, Wee says she has repaired her home’s walls and even painted the entire outside of her house in County Club Vistas I last spring.

“I wasn’t happy with the paint job that someone I hired had done, so I used nearly 30 gallons of paint and did it myself,” Wee says. “It is a lot of work, but I’ve done home repair and renovations before and I believe in doing things myself much of the time.”

A longtime woodcarver, Wee wanted to make her own display cabinets for her carvings and other collectibles and sought help from a Swedish cabinet maker in Tacoma, Washington.

“I chose my own wood — solid oak — because it’s strong and I like the look of it,” she says.

Wee also designed and made the beveled glass doors that decorate the top shelves of her display cases.

On top of the cabinets Wee features her many carvings of birds and a bust of her late Corgi, Baron — a life-size carving she says took her four years to finish.

Her latest interest, besides Pickleball and walking Ryder, her 14-year-old Corgi, is wood turning.

“It’s not carving but wood-working done on a lathe,” she says. “It’s a whole different skill.”

Her own workshop

Wee works in her own temperature-controlled home studio that she designed herself. It houses her hand tools, a variety of saws, a collection of motor-driven lathes and other wood-turning equipment.

“I had my work space designed and installed to my height for comfort and made sure the studio had lots of light,” she adds.

Wee employs a lathe to spin the wood at a high speed while using cutting tools, including a variety of chisels and knives, to carve the pieces of woods into the shapes she desires.

“I did take some classes in wood turning in Washington and in Tucson, but I also read articles and try to keep up on various techniques,” she says. “The machines can be expensive. I also have a friend, Bonnie Klein, who invented a mini-lathe and that one is special to me and it’s great for certain projects.”

Wee says that her recent obsession is creating basket illusion wood-turning art pieces that resemble basket weavings.

“It all starts with a piece of wood and using special tools — and this takes hours — I am able to make the wood look like baskets,” she says. “Some think the process is tedious, but I enjoy it.”

Wee makes ornate plates and vessels using her basket weave technique, some featuring birds and others highlighting Native American designs. She also makes pens using her wood-turning skills and creates bowls, some decorated with acrylic paint designs and others with colorful beads.

“I am very particular about each thing I do and I’m interested in so many things,” she says.

Laying floor tile

When Minnesota transplant Elise Braaten told her friends she was going to tile the floor in her master bedroom, she said her friends “laughed or groaned.”

“They told me that it would be too much to tackle, but the more they said I couldn’t do it, the more I wanted to do it myself,” Braaten says. “The boxes of tiles alone weighed more than 50 pounds each, and the only help I got on this project was help loading them into my car by the tile store’s sales staff. Tearing out the carpet myself was the easy part.”

Although the project took several weeks to complete, Braaten laid the ceramic tile herself, both in the main bedroom and the closet floor in the bedroom.

“I watched numerous You Tube videos online trying to learn the best way to tile a room using the materials I selected and after I finished, I was relieved but very pleased,” she says. “The next time I will remove all the furniture before I start, though. I ended up pushing the king size bed to one side of the room and then had to wait until the tile set before I could move the bed again and work on the other side.”

Her Las Campanas home has two bedrooms and one serves as her artist studio.

“I wanted to keep my studio, but I needed to use the room as a guest room too, so instead of taking up space buying twin beds for the room, I made two Murphy beds instead because they can be hidden away.”

Bed building

A Murphy bed, sometimes called a wall bed, can be pulled down because it’s hinged at one end so it can be folded up and stored vertically against a wall, Braaten says.

Again, using the internet and You Tube videos as her building instruction resource, Braaten built two Murphy beds using hinges she bought at a hardware store to make the beds lift up into a cabinet she also made herself.

“I used inexpensive wood and saved thousands making them myself,” she says. “I bought two twin mattresses and my grown son can sleep comfortably on it when he visits.”

When she needed more shelf space in the kitchen, Braaten designed and built a cabinet she calls a “pull out.”

“It’s made of wood with shelving and is the width of the space between my refrigerator and the wall,” she says. “I painted it the color of the wall, assembled it on a slider and put a door pull on the front panel so I can pull it out and slide it back in. It takes up no space and is hidden unless you know it’s there.”

Braaten says her next project is tiling her bathroom.

“I’m kind of excited to get started,” she says. “If someone says I can’t do it, just watch me get it done.”

 

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A low hum can be heard from inside the Hamilton Woodturners Club.

Tinkerers fill the room and woodchips fly, revealing treasures hidden underneath the dust.

It is scenes like these that changed Gideon Du Toit’s life.

“I’ll never be able to look at a tree the same way again,” he said.

The new woodturner started the hobby in February, showing off his skills at the Kawerau National Woodfest competition.

He came first in the newcomer category and also received two Highly Commended awards.

His tutor Clive Wilson called his skills exceptional.

“He’s an explorer, he’s a risk-taker, he’s a path-finder, he’s prepared to give it a go.”

Du Toit said he liked to take risks, but was not upset when his expectations weren’t met.

“I tried to make what they call an emerging bowl, it’s from a single piece, but I went through the edge of the bowl.

“So it’s not meant to look like this, but I don’t get upset about it because that’s part of the journey.”

Du Toit is now known as “the woodturning guy” among his friends. He often receives particularly difficult pieces of wood to turn.

“I come home in the evenings, and there’s wood outside my door, no joke. Somebody said ‘here’s a piece of kiwifruit vine’.

“I haven’t found anyone in the world who’s tried to turn kiwifruit vine, but I turned it because I wanted to,” he said.

Woodturning couldn’t be further from his field of work in IT, but it is something he has always wanted to do.

“My grandfather and my great grandfather were woodworkers. I still have some of their tools. I have some that my great grandfather made by hand,” Du Toit said.

“I just always wanted to try it and I came here and never looked back.

“In all my years of being on this planet, I’ve never met such friendly people, and I’m not exaggerating. I was welcomed with open arms.”

Du Toit said the club provides everything, he just has to turn up.

“I came here with the clothes on my body. All of the tools are here, the wood is here, the tutoring is here and it’s just astonishing.

“People share their knowledge, they share their food, their biscuits. It’s like a family.”

The woodturning club was originally at the Wintec Avalon campus, but when Wintec needed the space, the last eight members started again at 486 Whatawhata Road, Dinsdale.

The three-year-old club has now grown from its original eight, to 42 members.

 

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ELECTION RESULTS Greg Schramek, AAW Board President October 24, 2017 On behalf of the Board of Directors, I am pleased to announce the results of the 2017 election for the Board of Directors. Please join me in congratulating Rick Baker, Jeff Brockett, and Kathleen Duncan. Rick will serve a three-year term on the AAW Board of Directors beginning on January 2, 2018. Kathleen and Jeff will each serve their second 3-year terms on the Board. A total of 1,189 ballots were cast, with up to three votes allowed on each ballot, yielding 3,084 votes.  The AAW Board would like to acknowledge and thank all of the candidates. Each has dedicated countless hours to woodturning education in various volunteer roles. I encourage you to join the Board and AAW staff in expressing appreciation for their past and future service to our membership. I would also like to thank each of the members who cast ballots to express support for this essential process which sustains the leadership of our organization. Finally, I want to acknowledge AAW’s independent auditing firm, Olsen Thielen & Co., Ltd., for their diligent and thorough administration of the election process. Greg Schramek President AAW Board of Directors