Learn to woodturn with a club at the Butler Art Center
Melvin Dunlap holds a chisel up to a piece of wood spinning on a device that resembles a sewing machine, slowly chipping away its layers to mold it into a shape.
By the time he is done with this project, his arm and the floor around his feet are covered with a layer of stray wood shavings, and the finished product, a wooden bowl, remains on the lathe.
This is the process of woodturning, the craft of using a wood lathe with handheld tools to cut a shape that is symmetrical around an axis of rotation, as defined by the American Association of Woodturners. Dunlap, president of the Butler Area Woodturners and a member of the national association, said the process may take long, but it’s therapeutic throughout.
“For me, I don't call this woodwork. This is therapy,” Dunlap said from a side room in the Butler Art Center & Gallery. “When I'm at home doing this, I don't worry about anything else in the world. You can get away from it all.”
Woodturning is not only therapeutic for Dunlap — it’s a medium he and other administrators of the Associated Artists of Butler County hope to pass on to military veterans for the purposes of relaxing. Butler Area Woodturners have led classes every Monday for the past two-and-a-half years to teach military veterans how to woodturn, which the group does in collaboration with VA Butler Healthcare.
Dunlap commended one of the regular attendees, Chuck Jennings, who has been coming to woodturning classes for years. Jennings said he came to enjoy woodturning because of the choices the artist gets to make while working on a project.
“I never turned in my life. I thought I'd try it, and I enjoyed it,” he said. “You start out with a piece of wood, and you don't know where it's going to go.”
A woodturning club started in Butler in 2004, co-founded by Kenneth Hertzog, president of the Associated Artists of Butler County’s current board of directors. Throughout the years, Hertzog has continued woodturning, and helps lead classes at the art center on Mondays, the day of the free veterans class, and Thursdays, when anyone can pay to learn and create a project on a woodturner.
Classes every Thursday cost $25 each and all materials are supplied. Everyone who participates gets to keep whatever project they make.
“You'll leave here with something in your hand,” Dunlap said. “There are no other clubs around here doing this where you have a class where you make something you take home.”
While bowls and other tableware are simple projects people can make with woodturning, people can learn to make more complicated designs through continued practice with a lathe. Cheryl Schaefer has made candles and other cylindrical items for her home, and Jennings has had the idea of making an umbrella holder, also for use at his home.
Hertzog said while the art center provides wood for people to use, people can bring their own materials, like acrylics and alabaster, to use with the woodturners.
Even though he has only been woodturning for a little over two years, he said he is confident he can make almost anything he has seen other people make through collaboration and assistance from the Butler Area Woodturners.
“I see things in magazines and I think if they could do it, I'll try it,” Jennings said.
Dunlap said even though some of the people at the art center have years of experience woodturning — Hertzog boasting 20-plus years in the art — those who attend sessions at the art center are limited by the size of its lathes. According to Dunlap, bigger lathes can create bigger and more complicated projects.
“This is set up as a beginner's class, we're not equipped to do the level of work some of these guys want to go to, which is a shame,” Dunlap said. “The saying is, 'You can do small stuff on a big lathe, you can't do big stuff on a small lathe.'”
About five people attended the class on June 23, one of whom is 95-year-old veteran Dave Hillard, who has woodturned at the center for a few years. Dunlap said class size varies, but there are enough woodturning machines that everyone can have a turn even in a class of 10 people.
Experienced woodturners lead newbies on machines no matter what their skill level, and Dunlap said it is easy to start over if a project is not turning out the way a person wants. Additionally, a woodturner can work on the same project session after session, and it typically takes a few hours over the course of several sessions to complete even a simple project.
“The nice thing is though, with pottery, you've got to keep going until you're done,” Dunlap said. “This, you can stop and come back later.”
After a person completes a project at the art center, the woodturners will help an artist with its finish, and will even sand off rough edges so a project looks smooth and will not splinter. Not every project needs to be sanded or stained with a finish, Dunlap said, but many of the ones on display in the back of the gallery have been smoothed out for good presentation.
While projects can take a while before they take shape and are finally complete, other attendees of the woodturners meetings said they don’t mind the process — it makes the end result more satisfying.
“It's how to spend your evenings rather than watching TV,” Hertzog said.
Additionally, the club Monday evening was filled with banter from almost everyone in attendance, with people joking with one another about their projects and their personal lives. Dunlap said all the time in the back room has brought him closer together with the others, literally and figuratively.
“It started as a class but it's more of a club now,” Dunlap said. “We've become sort of like family.”
For more information on the art center and its woodturning classes and opportunities, visit the gallery’s website at butlerartcenterandgallery.org.
