Northwest Washington Woodturners pack end-of-May calendar with classes, demos, meeting

Northwest Washington Woodturners is lining up a dense late-May stretch built for turners who want something useful to put on the lathe right away. The club’s May 21 monthly meeting at Mount Vernon Christian School Auditorium, 820 W. Blackburn Rd., Mount Vernon, WA 98273, features Tom Voegeli on segmented turning, with the program specifically calling out getting started, best practices, building a masterpiece, mistakes to avoid and tools of the trade.

The meeting also keeps the club’s bench-to-bench culture front and center. Show-and-tell gives members a place to bring fresh work into the room, critique corner offers feedback before the meeting begins, and a wood raffle ticket goes to members who bring work. That mix matters in a club that says its mission is to give turners of all skill levels a forum to exchange knowledge, ideas and information about safe woodturning. The third-Thursday meeting slot is familiar to members, and Zoom access remains available for those who cannot make it to Mount Vernon in person.

Segmented turning is a smart draw for this kind of calendar, because it rewards planning as much as spindle or bowl time. It is also a topic with a wider audience than one local chapter: Segmented Woodturners, the online chapter of the American Association of Woodturners, was founded in 2009 and now says it has more than 500 members. That scale helps explain why a talk on segmented work can pull in turners who are looking past basics and toward cleaner design decisions, tighter glue-ups and more deliberate form.

The momentum does not stop after the club meeting. A Sawdust Saturday session follows on May 23, with an intro-to-bowls waitlist note attached, a sign that bowl work still draws enough interest to fill quickly. Then Matt Monaco takes over for two classes at Roger Dauer’s Shop in Anacortes, Washington, 9103 Molly Lane Unit #8, Anacortes, WA 98221. On May 24, Monaco teaches a goblets class from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. On May 25, he returns to the same shop and schedule for a fine-detail end-grain box with finial class.

Monaco brings a studio resume that fits the calendar’s emphasis on practical growth. He describes himself as a full-time woodturner in the Ozark region of Missouri with more than 20 years of experience, and his site identifies him as a Fine Woodworking contributor and ambassador. Put together, the meeting, Sawdust Saturday and the two Monaco classes give Northwest Washington turners a clear path from watching segmented forms to trying bowls, goblets and finial work before May closes.