Paul May's walnut and maple Pinwheel earns AAW turning spotlight
Paul May’s walnut-and-maple Pinwheel earned AAW Turning of the Week on June 22, 2026, with its off-axis tangential form and tight 9.5-inch profile drawing the eye.
Paul May’s Pinwheel earned AAW Turning of the Week on June 22, 2026, and the piece shows exactly why the forum spotlight landed on it. The tangential bowl, listed at 9.5 inches in diameter and 2.25 inches high, uses shades of walnut with maple accents to create motion through contrast rather than size.
That compact scale is part of the appeal. A tangential or off-axis bowl has to carry its energy through shape and proportion, and May’s piece does that with a restrained palette that lets the wood do the talking. The walnut reads as the main field, while the maple breaks the surface just enough to sharpen the geometry and keep the eye moving across the form.
AAW’s Turning of the Week is a recurring gallery feature drawn from the forum, and Pinwheel landed in the middle of that regular stream of member activity. The forum is member-moderated and built for sharing work, ideas, and feedback, with current prompts like the June turning challenge and the midyear box swap running alongside the weekly spotlight. In that setting, May’s bowl functioned as more than a finished object. It became a piece for comparison, study, and commentary from other turners who can read the grain choices and the structural choices at the same time.
May is not a newcomer to that conversation. In a February 2025 forum thread, members praised his segmenting work in American Woodturner and pointed to the way he gives form as much weight as design. In his forum bio, May said he spent about 30 years as a hobby builder of custom furniture, including cabinets and full bedroom suites, and that his day job was as an organic chemist. He also said he retired, sold his house, moved to a condo, and later re-established his shop after recovering space for his tools.
That background helps explain why Pinwheel feels so deliberate. It is a small bowl, but it carries the habits of a maker who understands structure, proportion, and material choice. In AAW’s weekly frame, that is what makes a gallery post turn into a lesson worth stopping for.
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