Coulee Region Woodturners feature acorn box demo, flower challenge

An acorn box demo, a flower challenge and a built-in dose of club help gave Coulee Region Woodturners a Saturday meeting with something for every turner to take home. The club met from 9 a.m. to noon April 18 at Onalaska Luther High School’s wood shop in Onalaska, with no registration required.

Tony Rozendaal led the featured demonstration, showing an acorn box project that hits several sweet spots for woodturners: form, lid fit and finishing detail in one compact piece. Rozendaal is associated with Opa’s Pens and is a member of Milwaukee Area Woodturners, a connection that gives his work a recognizable regional footing. He has said he has been making a lot of acorn boxes because they sell well on Etsy, and that lidded boxes or jars are among his favorite things to turn, which helps explain why the demo fit so neatly into a club meeting built around practical shop value.

The acorn box also lands in a useful middle ground for the room. Less experienced turners could study a small project with clear steps and a manageable size, while more advanced hands could focus on refinement, lid alignment and surface quality. For anyone thinking beyond the bench, the same form has obvious appeal for gifts, display pieces and craft-fair inventory.

The meeting’s flower-themed turning challenge added another layer of purpose. Instead of a routine show-and-tell, members were asked to bring work tied to a theme, a format that tends to push finished pieces out of the shop and into the room. That kind of challenge can be especially useful for turners looking for a nudge to complete projects, test design ideas or see how other members interpret the same prompt.

The club also kept the gathering firmly rooted in its social side. Bob R. brought coffee from Kwik Trip, and help was available for members who needed support with website functions, forums or uploading photos. That combination of coffee, shop talk and practical assistance reflected the club’s broader approach: make the meeting useful, but make it easy to take part.

Coulee Region Woodturners says it serves western Wisconsin, southeast Minnesota and northeast Iowa, and describes woodturning as shaping wood on a lathe into objects ranging from bowls and boxes to vessels, toys, tools and sculptural forms. The club also points to a strong service streak, noting in a newsletter that members have collected at least 187 stands for local healthcare facilities through its One Good Turn project. That mix of education, challenge and community giving gave the April meeting a reach well beyond one acorn box demo.