Wooden bowls, hand turned, Huston & Company, wood scraps, cherry, maple, walnut, Kennebunkport

Turning from Scraps

John Tomaszewski is a self-taught wood turner. He stops by our workshop now and then to pick up some of our ends and cut-offs. He digs out large chunks of maple, oak, cherry and most recently walnut.

John used to work building houses and always enjoyed working with wood. He’s now in the US Coast Guard, working primarily in the Boston area. To feed his love of woodworking, he began to dabble in turning: reading books, experimenting with different tools and lathes. He’s never taken a wood turning class. He taught himself how to sharpen his own tools too. He’s into it.

Wooden bowls, hand turned, Huston & Company, wood scraps, cherry, maple, walnut, Kennebunkport

In the three years that he’s been practicing, John’s burned out the motors on 3 different lathes. This is how we learn, right? He’s currently working with his fourth. The first was a small, tabletop model from which a few turnings flew across the room, banging into walls and bouncing off the floor. His current lathe is larger, sits on the floor and gives him much greater flexibility with his turnings.

Cherry bowl, turned John TOmaszewski, Huston & Company, furniture workshop
turned bowl, maple, solid wood, handcrafted, Kennebunkport Maine

After several visits to pick up material from our bins, John stopped back in with a small collection of his work (he assures us he has loads of turnings, tables overflowing in his own workshop). He’s never sold one, yet, and is pretty sure he couldn’t make the exact same thing twice, so he’s not heading full steam into production. But he loves that each one is different; that he never knows what the end result will be when he starts.

Maple bowl, wood turning, self-taught, maple scraps, furntiure making, Maine
Oak bowl by John Tomaszewski, Wells Maine, scraps from Huston & Company

Our workshop promises to be super busy this year, so we’re sure to have plenty of great bits for John as he keeps practicing and experimenting and learning.