Returning after our Covid Break – the South Auckland Woodturners Guild Christmas shop will be there again from 28 November to 24 December with more than 2000 hand-made items you will love.
As in 2020 we will be at 245 Great South Road. That is opposite the Countdown car park, south of the Library and a little south of the Averill Street intersection.
This is the only public sale we have of things made by our club members. It is hard to list the huge array of items but here are a few: bowls, clocks, chopping boards, pepper grinders, Christmas Tree decorations, lidded boxes, dibbles, spurtles, platters and heaps more.
The items shown here are from previous years as all the entries for this year’s sale are so new that they have not been photographed.
Our club members also make wig stands to give to Look Good Feel Better for the ladies who need to wear a wig after undergoing chemotherapy – each year we give them about 100 wig stands. Then we have the pleasure of making up a couple of hundred gift packs of little wooden bowls, toys and a host of little add-ons to give to the folk who are stuck in hospital over Christmas.
Our clubrooms are in the Papatoetoe Stadium Community Centre. There we have the important things for running a happy woodturning club like a large area for making tea and coffee, a good wood store, 12 full size lathes and a seating area for our members to view demonstrations on the central lathe which is supported by a video system to improve the view for that watching crowd. There are three small lathes for lending to members – usually newbies who do not have a lathe of their own. A couple of bandsaws and a belt sander complete the machine array. We meet there every Wednesday of the year except between Christmas and New Year – doors open at 5pm. For all members there is the opportunity of instant access to a lathe. During the school term we have an organised demonstration each club night starting at 7pm. In school holiday time there is nothing organised, the doors are still opened at 5:00pm and we chat or make shavings.
Most weekends the clubrooms are busy with our training programme. This is actually a nation-wide scheme overseen by the National Association of Woodworkers and originally designed by Aoraki Polytech. It covers all aspects of woodturning and can take three or four years of weekend attendances, with homework as well, to complete the course.
We used to have wonderful displays of our work in the Art Hall at the Royal Easter Show and in the Franklin Arts Exhibition. That has now all changed and we have the online Art of Wood Exhibition for all New Zealand woodworkers at https://exhibition.naw.org.nz/. South Auckland Woodturners Guild is among the sponsors and many of our members have competition entries and winners in most categories.