Arizona Woodturners Association sets June 20 demo meeting in Phoenix

Phoenix-area turners who wanted more than another polished screen demo had a clear place to go: the Arizona Woodturners Association’s June 20 meeting at the Family Life Center, where the club offered a live demonstration, an Instant Gallery and the usual club business in person or on Zoom. The noon gathering at 5757 N Central Ave gave members a real room to compare tools, finishes and turning choices, something a video clip cannot quite replace.

AWA says its general meetings usually include a short meeting, Instant Gallery, President’s Challenge and a demonstration, and June 20 fit that pattern. The club says it normally meets on the third Saturday of each month, which makes the June date easy to remember for local turners who keep their shop schedule around club day. The Phoenix site, in the Family Life Center fitness building, can get crowded in winter because of a farmers market and sporting events, but June offered the easier drive and a straightforward noon start.

The club’s June calendar also showed that AWA kept its women-focused programming moving during the month, with a Women in Turning session listed for June 3 at 9:00 a.m. and another Women in Turning item on June 20. That matters in a craft where the American Association of Woodturners says women make up less than 9% of its membership. AAW says its Women in Turning program is meant to encourage and assist women worldwide in pursuing woodturning and to share ideas, information and processes that build skills and creativity.

AWA identifies itself as a proud chapter of the American Association of Woodturners, which says it has more than 360 chapters worldwide and stages an annual symposium. The AAW’s 2026 International Woodturning Symposium was scheduled for June 4-7 in Raleigh, North Carolina, putting the local Phoenix meeting inside a much larger calendar of turning activity. That connection gives the Arizona club something a stand-alone tutorial never can: direct access to a national network that is still built around actual lathes, actual turnings and actual people in the room.

AWA also leans hard on that in-person network between meetings. Members can access recorded demonstrations, newsletters, a photo gallery, the Kundrat Learning Center, safety tips and other resources, and the club says more than 36 demos are available on video. But the point of the June 20 meeting was the live exchange, the chance to watch a turner work, inspect the Instant Gallery and see what other members brought in. For Phoenix turners who want the craft to stay active, that is the real value of showing up.