Central New England Woodturners blends Learn and Turn with May demonstration

Central New England Woodturners packed its May 7 meeting at Berlin 1870 Town Hall with the kind of format that keeps a local chapter useful: a 5:30 p.m. Learn and Turn, a 6:30 p.m. meeting, and Mike Smith at the lathe for the featured demonstration. The club scheduled the full evening from 5:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at 12 Woodward Avenue in Berlin, Massachusetts, giving newer turners a low-pressure way in and everyone else a clear reason to stay for the main demo.

That setup fit a club with real depth behind it. CNEW describes itself as a 100-plus member chapter of the American Association of Woodturners and says it was the first woodturning club in New England, formed in 1987. An older archived brochure put the membership around 50, which shows how much the chapter has grown while holding onto the same local identity and institutional memory that make club nights feel more than routine.

CNEW’s value comes from how specific its meetings are. The club says each meeting includes a demonstrator showing a technique the members want to learn, and recent examples have ranged from pepper grinders and green wood turning to deep hollow vessels, specialized tools, spirals and segmented turnings. The group also covers bowls, plates, vases, spindles, pens, segmented turnings, stave work, green wood, carving and texturing, so a single night can serve a spindle turner, a hollow-form worker and a segmented-project builder without feeling scattered.

The Learn ‘n Turn format is the practical engine under all of that. CNEW says experienced woodturners lead those sessions and provide the wood, tools and accessories needed to finish a small project on the club’s mini-lathes. The club had used the same approach at its April 2 meeting, when Reid Gilmore led a Learn & Turn on the spindle gouge before the business meeting. After the formal program, CNEW meetings also include show-and-tell and a wood swap, and the club says a specialty store is often open with discount consumables for turners.

The chapter has also built a digital extension of that classroom. CNEW says it keeps a growing library of demonstration and how-to videos from monthly meetings on YouTube, which means the teaching does not stop when the room clears. On May 7, though, the draw was immediate and in person: a club meeting built around a recognized demonstrator, a hands-on starter session and the kind of same-night skill progression that makes a strong chapter worth showing up for.