Northern Woodturners

 I recently travelled to the far North and bumped into a couple of woodturners who made themselves known through signs parked in front of their studio / workshops and flyers at several information centers.

One of them was the well known turner amongs the woodturning fraternity Rick Taylor who lives in Dargaville on te main tourist route to the Kauri Forest area.
His skills are well admired and his woodturnings are very nice indeed and mostly made from Kauri as you can imagine and some of the swamp Kauri he is using is abolutely stunning.
Rick is a very competent and versatile turner and also sells bowl blanks and very nice blanks for pen turning which he cuts from swamp Kauri also.
A good load of blanks is held in a container where they are drying slowly in about three years. He uses mostly the root and crown from swamp Kauri but these are now impossible to get so his main source is what he has hoarded over a great number of years. 

 

The second woodturner I bumped into was a chap living at a beautiful bay in Ahipara which lies just SW from Kaitaia. The backyard of the house facing the beach and at the front was his workshop facing the road where he put a sign up with the name of the bizz  " IRISH ".
A very good tourist spot and most people travelling to the bay will go past his house and workshop.  A very nice chap and a proficient woodturner who also works mainly with Kauri.  Does a lot of inlay with paua which he buys in Riverton and at the moment he embellishes his work with painterly art.
Retired by now but still doing loads of turnings which he also displays on Instagram.

Peter Aalders