Annual (December) 2025 Newsletter

MAWT 2025 Annual Newsletter

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Announcement – The Washington Park Senior Center is looking for a volunteer to do a wood turning demonstration in their shop. Talk to Mary Schwaller if you are interested.

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The MAWT December newsletter is a review of our activities for the year. Looking back we had an action packed and educational year. We did some good for our community with our contributions to the Nourish Milwaukee food pantry by donating bowls for them to sell. We made Beads of Courage Bowls for children going through cancer treatments at Children’s Hospital. We participated in the Turn for Troops program. We demonstrated woodturning over multiple days at four public events. In the coming year, our new Youth Turning program will get under way and we will help introduce young people to woodturning.

Our December meeting was the Christmas and holiday party. Good food and good fellowship was shared. Our raffle prizes included a $50 Woodcraft gift card, a Michael Gibson candle stand, and four Sally Ault dirty pour lids. Many wonderful turnings were exchanged in the optional gift exchange.

For the November meeting Mark Trenier did a timely and entertaining presentation and demo on turning a Nativity Scene.

The Turn for Troops event was led by the Pen Turning club on Nov 8 and 9. 103 pens were turned for the troops. The total for the year is currently 587. Thank you to everyone who participated in this effort.

MAWT participated in the Holiday Folk Fair this year. We had three lathes running with about fifteen members displaying, turning and selling their work over three days. The guest honorary turner in the photo is John Gurda, Milwaukee historian and author.

Mike Wendt presented Tree Physiology at our October meeting. He shared some of what he has learned as an Arborist and instructor at MATC about trees and what causes various effects in the wood we use.

Empty Bowls. On October 5, Tony Rozendaal and Kevin Seigworth turned bowls at the Empty Bowls charity event sponsored by Nourish Milwaukee. Nourish Milwaukee raised over $61,000 to support their food pantry. MAWT donated 217 bowls this year. Many thanks to all of you who donated your work for this worthy cause.

Youth Turning Program – Darrell Kohlmann has agreed to be the team leader for this program.

MAWT donated 16 Beads of Courage bowls this year. Ron Zdroik delivered them to Children’s Hospital.

Our September meeting was ‘Selling Your Work’. George Wawrzyniak, Ron Zdroik, Tony Rozendaal and Kevin Seigworth shared their experiences and recommendations.

Jon Behnke conducted an interesting and informative demo in August using GluBoost as a finish for pens and pendants. He also demonstrated adding color to the glue then applying it to the work.

German Fest: Randy Shilling, Mary Schwaller, and Greg Wimsey demonstrated turning, sold their work, and promoted MAWT with a large banner, flyers, and discussions about turning and MAWT.

Wood auction
The Bardenhagen wood auction raised $2,800 to support our new youth turning program. Members were able to stock their wood supplies with some really exceptional wood thanks to a generous donation by the Hank Bardenhagen family.

Sally Ault weekend in July. This was a fun and educational weekend with Sally, learning about embellishing your bowl lids with a paint pour and making lidded boxes.

The June meeting was about members sharing tips and tricks across a wide variety of topics..

The May meeting was our Extended Show and Tell. We had a wide variety of turned items brought in by many members. There were pieces with highly polished gloss finishes, some with wax and some with no finish. Some were embellished with paint. Most were wood, some were segmented and embellished, and some were acrylic. There was a nice variety of items from many MAWT members and I hope you found it inspirational for your next project.

Mike Wendt demonstrated proper tree felling on a Saturday, March 29 field trip. It was quite a thrill to see a 24 inch diameter Black Walnut tree hit the ground. About twenty MAWT members went home with some beautiful Black Walnut to turn.

Ron Zroik organized a clean up of our space and equipment at Woodcraft. There were eight other MAWT volunteers and they made short work of the cleaning and organizing. New shelving units were assembled and put in place for the Bardenhagen wood donation.

Stuart Batty presented an IRD (Interactive Remote Demo) from his studio in Colorado for our April meeting. The topic was cutting without torn grain on bowls and spindles.

Jay Guiliani and Mark Trenier presented in March on the topic of organizing your shop. Jay spoke to electrical considerations and offered to help advise anyone looking for solutions to electrical questions. Mark shared a presentation on the many ways and devices he uses to organize his shop to get the most efficient use of his space for turning.

Leigh White demonstrated the turning of a Weeble bowl at our February meeting. A Weeble bowl, Leigh’s name for them, is a bowl that’s been turned, usually with some kind of interesting top rim and/or bottom ornamentation, cut in half and then re-glued so that the bottom becomes the sides.

Our January meeting demonstrator was Lyle Jamieson via IRD. He delivered some valuable woodturning wisdom accumulated over his many years of turning as well as demonstrating his deep hollowing system.

Turn safe, have fun, and see you next year.

Kevin Seigworth
MAWT President