Guest DEMONSTRATIONS & seminars
Michael Poulin 11 apr 26
Michael started woodturning in 2015 through the making of an electric guitar with a friend. Wanting his volume knobs to made of wood, he started to experience with woodturning. He immediately got the bite and, soon after, purchased a good old Rockwell Beaver that was replaced in 2016 by a Vicmarc vl300. A versatile woodturner, Michael turns a large variety of objects such as bowls, off-axis pieces, pepper mills (more than a thousand!) and more than 1,500 drums while he was working for Moperk, a craft percussion instruments business. He has also provided beginner and intermediate level training to an estimated 50 woodturners since 2018. Self-taught by nature, Michael acquired most of his woodturning skills through a trial-and-error process. He also attended a short training program with Glenn Lucas during a trip to Ireland in 2016. At the demonstration on April 11, 2026 Michael turned a "bowl in a bowl": a piece using two axes providing a dishes stack look like appearance, and turned a canteen: woodturning on three axes requiring good planning and serious precision
Dan mcneill - 10 Mar 2026
Dan McNeill has been a woodturner for 26 years, beginning with the West Island Woodturners in Montreal and now a member of the Golden Horseshoe Woodturners Guild in Ancaster. After travelling to Japan in 2005 to study tool making and woodworking, he became deeply engaged with Japanese lacquer (urushi). Through multiple trips and dedicated language study, he learned traditional urushi techniques and adapted them to his own work. He is currently pursuing a specialist diploma in Japanese Art at London University, focusing on Asian lacquer. Below are some examples of his work.
Yann Marot - 23 Oct 2024
At this hands-on seminar, each student was guided in the creation of a rope bowl and also a raindrop box by Yann Marot. More information can be found here.
Graeme Priddle and Mellisa Engler - 9 Oct 2024
At this all-day seminar, Graeme and Melissa led the attendees through the fundamentals of design, influence and a wide range of surface embellishment techniques that were demonstrated the previous evening at the club's monthly meeting. More information can be found here.
Jim Williams October 2023
Jim Williams (www.turningtrees.ca) demonstrated how to turn a hat at the Valley Woodturners October 2023 meeting. The hat he created and donated will be raffled off as a fundraiser for the club. Photos of the hat being created can be seen below, along with other examples of Jim's hat creations on the lathe.
May 2023 - Frank Didomizio
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Frank did a demo of his multi-axis Vase in May 2023 and was kind enough to provide some resources to our club members.
Youtube video of the process |
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Past Special Events
David Ellsworth
David Ellsworth's first experience with the lathe was in a woodshop class in 1958, After high school he served three years in the military followed by eight years in college studying architecture drawing and sculpture, receiving a Master's degree in Fine Art from the University of Colorado in 1973. He started the woodworking program at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, Colorado in 1974, and the following year opened his first private woodturning studio in Boulder Colorado. It was during the mid-1970's that David developed a series of bent turning tools and the methods required for making the thin-walled hollow forms of which he id known worldwide.
His first article titled, "Hollow Turning" appeared in the May/June 1979 issue of Fine Woodworking Magazine. His first book, Ellsworth on Woodturning, was published by Fox Chapel Publ. in 2008. David is the founding member of the American Association of Woodturners, of which he was president from 1986-1991, and its first Honorary Lifetime Member. He has written over fifty articles on subjects related to craft and woodturning and has operated the Ellsworth School of Woodturning at his home and studio in Buck's County, Pennsylvania since 1990. His works have been included in the permanent collections of thirty-six museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He has taught workshops throughout the world and has received fellowship grants from the National Endowment of Arts, the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts, and the PEW Foundation. In 2009 he was elected the "Master of the Medium" by the James A. Renwick Alliance of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He is an Honorary Lifetime Member of the Collectors of Wood Art, and a Fellow and a former Trustee of the American Craft Council.
David Ellsworth's first experience with the lathe was in a woodshop class in 1958, After high school he served three years in the military followed by eight years in college studying architecture drawing and sculpture, receiving a Master's degree in Fine Art from the University of Colorado in 1973. He started the woodworking program at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, Colorado in 1974, and the following year opened his first private woodturning studio in Boulder Colorado. It was during the mid-1970's that David developed a series of bent turning tools and the methods required for making the thin-walled hollow forms of which he id known worldwide.
His first article titled, "Hollow Turning" appeared in the May/June 1979 issue of Fine Woodworking Magazine. His first book, Ellsworth on Woodturning, was published by Fox Chapel Publ. in 2008. David is the founding member of the American Association of Woodturners, of which he was president from 1986-1991, and its first Honorary Lifetime Member. He has written over fifty articles on subjects related to craft and woodturning and has operated the Ellsworth School of Woodturning at his home and studio in Buck's County, Pennsylvania since 1990. His works have been included in the permanent collections of thirty-six museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He has taught workshops throughout the world and has received fellowship grants from the National Endowment of Arts, the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts, and the PEW Foundation. In 2009 he was elected the "Master of the Medium" by the James A. Renwick Alliance of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He is an Honorary Lifetime Member of the Collectors of Wood Art, and a Fellow and a former Trustee of the American Craft Council.
