Port Townsend
Woodworkers Show
Celebrating Local Wood
For the 2022 Port Townsend Woodworkers show we turn the spotlight onto Local Wood.
As furniture makers, turners and as the customers of makers we have become accustomed to seeing pieces made of wood imported from elsewhere, whether that is Cherry from Pennsylvania or Sapele from South America. We'd like to encourage everyone, much like the Local Food movement, to consider buying and making pieces made from locally sourced wood and made by local craftspeople.
At the 2022 show you'll see a variety furniture, bowls, spoons and other wooden ware on display that have been made from the lumber of two very special local trees.
In 2021 Jefferson Land Trust conducted it's first timber harvest at Valley View Forest in Chimacum. The harvest was carefully planned to start the transition from forest that had been clear cut then grown back untended to a forest that is both a more natural and more diverse habitat. The Splinter Group is the grateful recipient of two trees from the harvest process
In December 2021 we had a Big Leaf Western Maple and a Red Alder dropped by a professional faller. The logs from these trees have been milled into boards. Some of those boards were in a dehumidification kiln, drying gently and were made available to makers in the summer of 2022. The rest of the boards will be air dried and available for the 2024 show.
Some of the limbs and other pieces from those trees, that would go to waste in a commercial felling operation, were given to local carvers, the Strait Turners Woodturning Club and the Seattle Spoon Club.