Car­ol Quash

Not every­one can see po­ten­tial in items that no longer serve their ini­tial pur­pose. But wood­turn­er Evan Samuel has a knack for chang­ing what most peo­ple would deem use­less pieces of wood in­to one-of-a-kind dec­o­ra­tive pieces. He is invit­ing in­ter­est­ed young peo­ple to at­tend the free work­shops and class­es he start­ed last year, so they can learn a skill that can put them on the road to en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

“I would re­al­ly en­cour­age any young per­son to get in­volved in wood­turn­ing be­cause it is a very sim­ple way to make some very use­ful items out of dis­card­ed wood, that can be­come a source of in­come.”

Samuel and his wife, Stel­la, host­ed Come and See, an ex­hi­bi­tion of wood­turn­ing art at Samuel’s Yard Wood­turn­ing Gallery in Long­denville on May 2 and 3.

The gallery ex­hib­it­ed a va­ri­ety of func­tion­al and dec­o­ra­tive pieces, all made from pieces of wood that were dis­card­ed – pruned branch­es, fall­en trees, trees cut to fa­cil­i­tate hous­ing or in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment, pieces of wood he just picked up at the side of the road. Tamarind, poui, ma­hogany, cedar, eu­ca­lyp­tus, you name it and Samuel has turned it.

“Wood­turn­ing is an as­pect of wood­work­ing in which a block of wood is shaped by a chis­el while spin­ning on a lathe,” the re­tired wood­work teacher ex­plained to Busi­ness Guardian.

He opened the gallery in May 2022 be­cause he want­ed to cre­ate a ded­i­cat­ed space to dis­play his unique hand-turned items. He said his space is the on­ly one in Trinidad and To­ba­go where the type of work he does is dis­played, and he is hop­ing more peo­ple can see the val­ue in the skill.

Samuel bought his first lathe in 1983 and start­ed to make func­tion­al items like bowls, mor­tars and pes­tles, vas­es and can­dle­hold­ers.

Even­tu­al­ly, though, wood­turn­ing skills be­came side-lined with the in­tro­duc­tion of com­put­er nu­mer­i­cal con­trol (CNC) ma­chines that use com­put­er pro­gram­ming to pre­cise­ly con­trol cut­ting tools like drills, routers and lath­es to shape ma­te­ri­als.

“I de­cid­ed to move away from that kind of com­pe­ti­tion with the CNC ma­chine, and use an ex­tra­or­di­nary type of wood­turn­ing which I con­sid­er now to be wood­turn­ing art. Be­cause there is wood­turn­ing craft, the func­tion­al ones, and then there’s the artis­tic ones that are main­ly dec­o­ra­tive that peo­ple could fit in­to their decors.”

De­scrib­ing him­self as the Miles Davis of wood­turn­ing, Samuel said he used his own pas­sion for the skill and lessons from YouTube to get him to where he is to­day; sell­ing his pieces and ex­hibit­ing his work in gal­leries. He said when he gets in front of the lathe, he fol­lows no rules ex­cept safe­ty rules, so he nev­er knows for sure what the fi­nal prod­uct will look like, and he nev­er repli­cates a piece.

“That is one of the main rea­sons I don’t do cus­tomised work.”

Apart from at his own gallery, his work has been shown at Ex­po Art in To­ba­go, City Week in San Fer­nan­do, at Shaw Park Com­plex in To­ba­go at a Car­ifes­ta event, at the Paint­ings In The Gar­den ex­hib­it at Cen­tral Bank, and at the Thinkart gallery in Port-of-Spain.

He ex­plained that wood­work and wood­turn­ing are op­po­site sides of the same trade.

“In wood­work, the piece of wood is held in a sta­tion­ary po­si­tion and the saw blade cuts the wood. In wood­turn­ing, the chis­el is held in a sta­tion­ary po­si­tion and the wood spins.”

He said what is nice about wood­turn­ing is that it does not re­quire a huge in­vest­ment to start.

“You do not need a lot of ma­te­ri­als ex­cept the wood,” which he said can be found any­where. The re­quired tools would be a wood­turn­ing lathe, some chis­els, and a saw.

Samuel made his own wood lathe and turn­ing chis­els out of re­cy­cled ma­te­r­i­al.

“So I am self-suf­fi­cient when it comes to wood­turn­ing.”

He laments that more schools in T&T do not of­fer wood­turn­ing as a skill.

“Any­time a young per­son is ex­posed to a ma­chine, more than like­ly they grav­i­tate to­wards it.”

He said he is will­ing to pass on his skill and knowl­edge, at no cost, for two rea­sons; to of­fer an in­ter­est­ed young per­son an op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn and earn, and to en­sure that the art of wood­turn­ing is pre­served.

“This is a rare skill that I have, and when I do a work­shop, I show them what wood­turn­ing is. And based on that, they will de­ter­mine if they will want to come and at­tend class­es. I do not charge peo­ple ex­cept if it’s a whole group from a com­pa­ny that sends in their work­ers to learn wood­turn­ing.”

He said while his skill has been a source of in­come, for him it is not so much about the mon­ey.

“It is my way of giv­ing back to so­ci­ety.”