By Kyle Dunn and Jeff Odom
The craft of woodturning is described as an “obsession” or an “addiction” by many members of the Tri-County Woodturners Club.
However, all who attend the monthly meeting would agree on their definition of what they create — a work of art.
The club has met on the first Wednesday of each month at the Lutz Civic Center since 1998. The meetings, which draw a capacity crowd, usually consist of a showcase of work from various members, a raffle for recent artwork and a demonstration on carving techniques and construction from visiting experts.
Franck Johannesen, a Norwegian by way of Sarasota, attended the Lutz club as a visitor from the Sarasota Woodturners Association. He gave a demo during the March 6 meeting on techniques for buffing out scratches from finished products.
Johannesen spoke through a microphone. His hands and workspace were displayed on a projector screen for the whole crowd to see as he worked his way through the making of a bowl from start to finish. Sitting in the wings off to the side, hands rested on a handmade cane she’d carved herself, Judy Francisco, the president of the Lutz club, watched intently, soaking up every word.
“(The club) needed somebody to be president, and so I volunteered,” Francisco said. “Somebody’s got to take charge of things.”
Francisco is in charge of the north Tampa chapter of the American Woodturners Association (AAW), which is known as the Tri-County Woodturners Club for its service to members from Pasco, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.
Her duties run the gamut from ensuring that meetings run smoothly to helping organize club events, such as an upcoming wood show taking place at the Florida State Fairgrounds. She also collaborates with the other AAW chapters around the state for larger shows and conventions like the International Annual Symposium, which is at the Tampa Convention Center from June 28to 30.
“I’ve always been puttering with something,” Francisco said, who, already experienced in making furniture and woodcarving, joined the north Tampa chapter in 1999. “My overall goal is to bring in more young people and keep the art of woodturning alive.”
Club member Adam Hood, 30, has had his crafts showcased in two popular woodturning magazines, but his story is much different than others at the Lutz chapter.
Hood is bound to a wheelchair and paralyzed from the waist down as a result of a motorcycle accident six years ago. He found woodturning almost by accident, and continued with it once he discovered it was more than just a hobby.
“A chunk of wood is a blank canvas,” Hood said with a smile. “As soon as the grout touched wood, I fell in love.”
The club’s members are a self-deprecating and adaptable bunch. They write with the wooden pens they made as beginners and eat with wood-handled silverware of their own creation.
Hood even utilizes a special type of lathe, a machine for working wood or metal, adjusted to the height of his wheelchair.
The Woodturners’ arsenal is as varied as the rings of a tree, and reclamation and re-usability are chief among them.
Art Worth, a relatively new member who has bounced around as a schoolteacher, U.S. Army officer and now a private equity manager, described how he made a decorative bowl topped with an elaborate finial spire from the bark of a damaged red eucalyptus tree.
“The rest of this is at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean,” Worth joked. Another piece is made from the same ash wood used to make baseball bats.
Worth volunteers with Viable Lumber, a co-op venture dedicated to diverting damaged and wasted trees toward more worthwhile endeavors like woodworking and making furniture than to landfills and lumber yards. Like a painter being paid in canvasses, Worth is paid in wood, which he uses for future woodturning projects.
For more information or how to join the club, visit www.tricountywoodturners.com.
