AAW Forum Spotlights Tim Connell's Black Locust Basket Illusion as Turning of the Week

Black locust is a wood that divides turners: brutally hard, prone to checking, but capable of a golden luster that stops people cold. Tim Connell apparently made it do something else entirely. His piece "Black Locust Basket Illusion Series #4" was named Turning of the Week by the American Association of Woodturners forum, the community's recurring weekly spotlight that surfaces standout work from its membership.

The selection drew engagement from several forum members, with Bob Franklin, Michael Nathal, Mark Fairchild, and Jaramiah Severns all appearing in the forum's reaction thread alongside Bill Boehme, who serves as both forum administrator and a member of the TOTW selection team. Boehme's dual role in the program, helping curate the very feature he also participates in as a community member, reflects how tightly knit the AAW forum's volunteer infrastructure tends to be.

Connell's forum presence extends beyond the basket illusion piece. The media listing associated with his profile includes "Full Hearts," two entries each for "Locking lid Box" and "Seeds of Growth" (catalogued as Seeds of Growth 1 and Seeds of Growth 2), and an "Olive wood box," suggesting a body of work that ranges across lidded forms and decorative vessels. The basket illusion format, a turned piece engineered to mimic the look of woven construction, is one of the more technically demanding visual tricks in the craft, requiring precise wall thickness control and often segmented or hollow-form technique to sell the effect convincingly.

The Turning of the Week feature has long functioned as one of the AAW forum's most effective discovery mechanisms, regularly pulling work out of individual gallery threads and into broader community view. For turners not already following Connell's posts, the TOTW placement put Series #4 in front of the full forum membership.