PORT TOWNSEND — Local wood will be the focus of the 2022 Port Townsend Woodworkers Show this weekend.
The show, with some 23 booths, will be from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday in the American Legion Hall, 209 Monroe St. in Port Townsend.
The show — which will feature furniture makers, sculptors, carvers, woodturners and the work of students at local high schools — is expected to draw between 1,500 and 2,000 visitors, said Tim Lawson of The Splinter Group.
On view will largely be work of The Splinter Group, but also invited are artisans with the Strait Turners in Clallam County and the Seattle Spoon Club “to highlight the diversity and quality of woodworking in Jefferson, Clallam and adjacent counties,” organizers said.
“We are passionate about promoting the sheer skills there are in this area related to wood,” Lawson said.
“The wood is intended to stay dry,” he added, joking, “we’re not promoting the marine trades.”
The show’s focus on local wood is fueled by two gifts provided by the Jefferson Land Trust, according to the group’s website at www.splintergroup.org.
“At the 2022 show, we’re planning to have a variety of furniture, bowls, spoons and other wooden ware on display that have been made from the lumber of two very special local trees,” organizers said.
Jefferson Land Trust’s first timber harvest in 2021 was at Valley View Forest in Chimacum.
The harvest was planned to start the transition from forest that had been clearcut and then grown back untended to a forest that is more natural and diverse, the land trust said.
“The Splinter Group is the grateful recipient of two trees from the harvest process,” Lawson said.
In December, The Splinter Group had a bigleaf western maple and a red alder dropped by a professional faller, the group said. Logs from the trees have been milled into boards, some of which are now drying in a dehumidification kiln.
Those are expected to be available to makers sometime between late April and early May.
The rest of the boards will be air dried and available for the 2023 and 2024 shows.
Some of the limbs and other pieces from those trees, which would have gone to waste in a commercial felling operation, have been given to local carvers, the Strait Turners Woodturning Club and the Seattle Spoon Club, Lawson said.
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Executive Editor Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3530 or at lleach@peninsuladailynews.com.
