When I was a kid growing up in central Illinois, I happened to be at the mall with my father.  He was a humorless mix of the Great Depression, 50’s stereotypes, and Midwestern sensibilities.  The only reason he would ever go to the mall was the Sears store, so one Saturday, as we walked through the tool section, we happened on a ShopSmith salesman giving a demo just outside the store’s main door to the mall.  At one point, the guy on the stage made a huge mess, using the lathe attachment to throw wood shavings out onto the audience.  I’m not sure if the adults in the audience saw that as a selling point, but as a kid, it looked like nothing but fun and something I needed to try.  My dad wasn’t impressed,  didn’t buy the machine (it was apparently really expensive), and told me that lathes were a useless tool to own.

Well… maybe, but it sure looked like fun!

I went to High School in a very small, all white, school that was populated by either “farm kids”, “townies”, and kids of parents who commute to work in the larger town to the north.  There wasn’t anything progressive about the way the school was run.  It seemed the rules made in the 50’s were still good enough to be followed.  During my time there, back in the late 70’s/early 80’s, you couldn’t get into any of the shop classes if you were “college bound”.  The logic seemed to be “if you’re going to get a white collar job, why would you need blue collar skills”?  It seemed wrong to me that college graduates wouldn’t need to know how to make anything with their hands or fix something that broke, but the principal didn’t agree.  When I asked to take a shop class, I was simply told “no, you’re smarter than that”.  I managed to get myself into a the senior woodworking class, without having taken any of the “beginner” woodworking classes.  All I had to do was not take a foreign language, not take an accounting class, let the study hall show up on my schedule, then wait for a principal to be distracted.  When he called in sick, I rushed his stand-in and hit him with the “might as well take something instead of a study hall” argument.  My request was approved and I was in!  (Guess I was at least smart enough to work their own system against them!)  By Christmas break, I had finished all the prerequisite training, had finished my nightstand project, and was looking for something “quick” I could finish before the break and decided to try out using a lathe.  Scanning the shop, I saw two possibilities.  First, was a metal lathe, but no one was allowed to use it because A) the school board decided the liability of getting a metal shaving stuck in your eye was too great, and B) a kid in a prior year’s class had used it to make a working desktop cannon and apparently the test firing in the back of the shop wasn’t as covert as initially expected.  The second choice was a dusty old Delta spindle lathe sitting in a corner, looking like something that had been cast off during one of the two world wars.  The vision of shavings flying everywhere flooded back into mind and my next project was set.  I made this turning out of a walnut board:

It was done with a face plate and waste block, it is incredibly thick at the base, and must not have been sanded beyond 100 grit.  By today’s standards, I have to resist putting it back on the lathe and trying to make it “right”.  At the time, though, I was sure I had created a masterpiece!

After high school, the years started to move faster as life started to unfold.  Collage, alcohol, work, marriage, mortgages, bills, kids, more kids…  In my early 40’s, I joined a local wood carving club because my wife at the time demanded a carved wooden tiger that she had seen one of the club members create.  While I never did come up with either the skills or the desire to make her a tiger, I did find it was oddly satisfying to create something out of a plain block of wood, so I kept at it.  I was never better than proficient at best, but it was fun.  One of the other guys in the club, Bob Adam, had been a wood turner for many years and joined the club because he wanted to learn to incorporate carving into his turnings.  While the club was at Bob’s shop working on a group carving project, I was drawn to the giant OneWay 2436 lathe (with two extensions, no less) that Bob had in his shop.  Again, the same vision of shavings flying all over the place flooded back into my mind.  We talked and he invited me back to his shop a week later for a quick lesson on turning.  That night I made this bowl out of cedar on his Jet mini-lathe:

That was 2009 and as soon as I saw what I had created, carving wood took a distant second place to turning wood!  Bob has probably forgotten more about wood turning than I will ever learn and I am forever grateful that he has spent the last however many years trying to help me hone my skills.  He has the patience of a saint, even though I’m still a lousy student!  When the older kids started to leave the house, I took the basement bedroom and transformed it into my workshop.  By the time all the machinery, tools and wood get stacked into such a small space, there’s really not a whole lot of room to actually work.  Someday, I’ll build a REAL workshop and begin upgrading tools.  Someday…

Since then, my marriage ended (thankfully), I have full custody of 6 fantastic kids from 18 to 26, and 4 grand children that are an absolute joy to be around.  My job ended after 35+ years and turning has become the combination of a hobby, a passion, and at some level, therapy.  Bob (who is now retired and absolutely annoys the crap out of me with his stress free lifestyle!) and I still go to his shop every week or so when schedules open to work on projects, talk about anything and everything, and try to accomplish different things with a lathe that look like they might be fun, dangerous, or both.  He also talked me into joining the American Association of Woodturners (www.woodturner.org) and the local affiliated woodturning club (www.centralillinoiswoodturners.com).  If anyone is interested in seeing what this whole turning thing is all about, I highly suggest you attend a club meeting.    Joining the club was hands down one of the best decisions I’ve made in the last 4 years.  No matter where you go, wood turners seem to be an accepting, easy-going, group of people.  We’ve been making wig stands to donate to the Susan G. Komen breast cancer foundation that are given to women who lose their hair because of the cancer treatments.  Using something I enjoy doing to help other people really is the best of all possible worlds.

The kids keep telling me I should open a shop, start selling at craft fairs, find a gallery to sell my work, or get into Etsy, Pintrest and Facebook to “cross market my mad skills”.  They keep sending me applications for shows in the area and even bought me a cube thingy so I can take credit cards via my phone as a Christmas present.  They think they’re being supportive, but all I see is a failure to teach them how to be subtle.  Maybe someday when I have the life of ease that Bob’s currently enjoying I’ll look into it, but right now that sounds like a whole lot more work than fun!  Until then, I’ll keep making stuff that makes me smile, giving it away to people who would appreciate it (which also makes me smile), donating a piece once in awhile to a charity auction (still smiling), and laughing as the kids fight over who should be allowed to “procure” the latest piece I’ve made or cry out in shock as defective efforts are added to the wiener roast fire.

My goal for this site is pretty simple.  All I’m trying to do is help others see the simple beauty in the forms, patterns and colors hidden by nature, deep within trees, and keep experimenting with new techniques, colors, and materials.  If I’m lucky, people will comment on the pieces they like or smile as they browse through the blog.  If I’m really lucky, another wood turner will be inspired to make something similar, or take an idea I’ve started and move it further.  That’d be really cool!

Thanks for reading this, and enjoy the site!