Highland Woodturners plan practical lathe night for mushrooms and open day

Highland Woodturners is carving out an extra evening on April 23 that does double duty: members will get time on a club lathe, and the workshop will turn out mushrooms for children’s activities at the club’s open day in August.

The club listed the session as an “EXTRA SESSION” on its 2026 meeting calendar, with the mushroom-making night starting at 6.30pm. The invitation was direct and practical, with a couple of spaces still available for members who want to turn up and get involved. That matters in a club where machine time is always valuable, and where an open lathe slot can mean the difference between watching a technique and actually getting hands on the wood.

The session sits neatly inside the way Highland Woodturners already runs its club nights. Social time starts at 6pm, tea and coffee is free, and the club has long kept space open for members to bring work in, talk through problems, and compare projects around the table. It also says it is investigating the practicalities of making the workshop available for members who want to use a lathe, with safety and supervision at the center of that effort.

The mushroom build is more than a novelty. The pieces are being made for the children’s activities at the August open day, giving the April evening a clear purpose beyond the lathe bed. That mix of access and outcome has become part of the club’s identity. Its history page says Highland Woodturners was conceived in 2005, formally started in the summer of 2006, and affiliated to the Association of Woodturners of Great Britain on 10 April 2006.

That same practical streak showed up in the club’s open day on 10 August 2024 at Munlochy Village Hall, where members raised money toward a defibrillator for the hall basement workshop where they meet. A redacted 2025 AGM document later put the total at £950.30, and a 20 June 2024 meeting report said all five lathes were working on items for that fundraiser. Taken together, the records show a club that uses its machines, its meetings and its public events to keep the turning active and useful, both inside the workshop and beyond it.