SWAT Regional Demonstrators for 2025
Here are your 2025 Regional Demonstrators:
(in alphabetical order)
Lionel Bedard
After a lifelong career in construction, I was looking for a creative hobby. I attended a wood show with the intention of learning how to turn a bowl and perhaps incorporate wood carving. In a very short time, turning developed into a passion and a shop was built in the backyard. Every piece of wood has its own story and no wood pile is too big. I am always searching for unique characteristics in a variety of wood, domestic and exotic to turn functional as well as artistic pieces. I look for different shapes and forms to incorporate in my vases, bowls, platters and non-functional pieces. Natural edges as well as flaws in the wood are often used as features. Often pieces of wood will sit for years until I get a vision as to what the piece will give me. There is always something new to learn. I have introduced colour and gold leafing, stabilization as well as inlays into some of my pieces for added interest. I was very pleased when several of my pieces found a home and are displayed among the six Official Residences of Canada.
Over the years, I have been fortunate to attend symposiums and demonstrations from renowned turners, with the goal to learn new skills and push my boundaries further. Additionally, I have been pleased to share my skills and knowledge as an instructor at various woodturning clubs in Ontario, Montreal, QC and the USA, the latest of which was in 2023 at Ron Campbell’s Woodturning Retreat in Cedar Springs, MI.
I was a founding father of the Bytown Woodturners in Ottawa and have remained very active. Our club holds many hands-on workshops of which I am one of the instructors. I particularly enjoy encouraging new turners to grow their skills so they can discover the endless possibilities of woodturning.
Demo Topic:
Multi-axis High Wing Natural Edge Bowl
Jim Bob Burgoon
Jim Bob is a graduate of West Texas State University with a degree in Industrial Education. He oversaw the Woodworking class at Levelland High School from 1983 to 1998. He then served the Lubbock Independent School District, teaching Technology Education at two middle schools until his retirement in 2011. During his teaching tenure, numerous students competed in the Technology Students Association’s regional and state project competitions. He was named Regional Outstanding Teacher by the South Plains Industrial Teacher Association three times during his teaching career.
Burgoon joined the South Plains Woodturners upon its inception in 2006. Since then he has served in the capacities of club librarian, Treasurer, 1st Vice-President, President, and Past President. He is currently serving his fifth term as President for SPW. Jim Bob is the current vendor chairman for SWAT.
With his extensive background in woodworking, Jim Bob has demonstrated numerous times for his local club. He has also demonstrated for the Panhandle Area Turners Society (PATS) in Canyon, Mountain Top Turners in Ruidoso, New Mexico, Woodturners of North Texas in Fort Worth, Comanche Trail in Midland, Concho Valley in San Angelo, Central Texas Woodturners in Austin, Hill Country in Kerrville, and SWAT. Jim Bob is the lead teacher for the South Plains Woodturners beginner and intermediate classes held 6 times annually. He has also been an instructor in the Nave’s Woodturning Retreat and the Trinity Council Woodturning Retreat.
Since retirement in 2011, Jim Bob has opened a woodworking shop. He does a wide variety of woodworking activities from custom production turning to flat work! His work can be viewed on Facebook by searching @jimbobburgooonwoodworks. Jim Bob annually turns commemorative baby rattles for Monterey Church of Christ’s Family Commitment Sunday. He has lived in Lubbock since 1985. Burgoon is married, with two children and two grandchildren.
Demo Topic:
Flask with Decorative Medallions
James Carter
June 2006… James; receives a lathe from wife for his birthday. Fast forward though Seven years of YouTube tutorials, trial and error, and a whole lot of tenacity; when one winter day he visits his first Embroidery Seminar. It was there, he realized his calling. Stitch in Turn was born of the idea that quality, hand-made embroidery tools should be affordable and accessible. Since that fateful day in 2013, Woodturning has become James only occupation. James’ passion for the art and skill of woodturning is evident in every piece he creates; his work has been showcased in numerous publications from around the world, and he’s actively working to help foster the next generation of craftsmen.
Demo Topic:
Spindle Basics
James Duxbury
Jim Duxbury is an artisan with over 50 years of experience who “thinks out of the box.” An active member of the North Carolina Woodturners Guild, North Coast Woodturners, and the Association of Woodturners of Great Britain, he has won numerous awards for his unique artistic and functional pieces including original kaleidoscope designs.
Jim has developed kaleidoscope plans and a comprehensive DVD, demonstrated kaleidoscopes and numerous other turnings conducted workshops at dozens of Woodturning Chapters and Woodworking Clubs in addition to the North Carolina Woodturning Symposium, the Utah Woodturning Symposium, the Southwest Association of Turners Symposium, the National AAW Symposiums, and the Brewster Kaleidoscope Society. Many woodturners have been inspired by his demonstrations and are now successfully making kaleidoscopes.
Although Jim has claimed to be retired since 1996, the abundance of dust from woodturning evolved into the invention of a respirator of which he holds two U.S. patents. He and his wife Rita operate Duxterity LLC, a division of Elegant Creations, marketing his gallery of fine quality wooden objects. You can visit his website at www.duxterity.com/ec
Additionally, Jim writes monthly woodturning related articles which are published in Woodturnings (England).
Jim resides in Graham, North Carolina. With the help of his wife Rita he creates all sorts of unique turnings from small bottle stoppers to bowls, bud vases, trays, furniture, wooden hats, chandeliers, peppermills, and, of course, his fine kaleidoscopes.
Demo Topic:
Magical Morse Taper
Linda Jane Ferber
I have early memories of working on craft projects, mostly involving spending time with family. The creative process of being a wood artist is my passion. Engaging all my senses being present and emerged and challenged by the process.
I love to create items that tell a story, capture a moment or emotion. The beginning of the process is the material and form, selecting the wood, turning the shape. The completion adding the embellishment, the patterns, the textures and color.
My inspiration is drawn from nature and my surroundings as well as memories and dreams. It is making a connection to these experiences and attempting to interpret them through the form, movement and color of a piece. The joy of making a sculpture that invites interaction from the viewer to experience the energy through touch and discovery of the details.
Demo Topic:
Turn a Wig Stand
Elyce Longazalle
Demo Topic:
Resin Casting using Various Molds
Steve McNeil
My journey into the turning world began over 20 years ago. I started with turning ink pens and bottle stoppers. A few years later, I joined the local wood turners club, Lincoln Land Wood Turners. I quickly became interested in turning larger items and developed a friend-mentor-turning partner relationship with club member, Michael Blankenship. Following the direction of my friend, I started turning large bowls, lidded boxes, and segmented pieces. I also joined the Woodturners St. Louis club. In the past few years, I have demonstrated for both Lincoln Land Wood Turners and Woodturners St Louis clubs. In 2023, I was selected for the Edwardsville Art Show Mayor’s Choice Award for my 276 piece cherry segmented jug. In 2024 at the Canton Art on Main Art Fair, I won the Best Wood award for my artistry.
Demo Topic:
Copper Lidded Box
Lenny Nederveld
Lenny has been in the field of safety for over 35 years and is a retired Certified Safety Professional. He has worked as a safety Manager for an oilfield service company where he started his safety career. While there he developed a comprehensive HAZWOPER training program and trained most everyone in the company. After 17 years he branched out to become a safety consultant working for various companies such as Exxon Mobil, BHP, and Hess Corporation. He later was hired by Hess to be part of a new group on the corporate level to perform HSE (health, safety & environmental) audits for all Hess facilities worldwide.
He has worked in many countries over the globe including Malaysia, Ghana, Russia, Australia, China as well as several countries in South America, Europe and Africa.
He retired and began woodworking and woodturning in 2015 along with periodic short term safety work and acting as an Expert Witness.
Demo Topic:
Hidden Hazards of Woodturning
Anne Ogg
An artisan in the International Guild of Miniature Artisans, I am a woodturner specializing in miniatures, specifically 18th and 19th century replicas in a scale of one inch to one foot. I teach woodturning at UNC Ashville in Skillset, a community outreach program that began in 2018 as a shop class for girls and now expands to reach all members of the community. I served 6 years on the board of Carolina Mountain Woodturners, 2 years as vice president and 2 years as president, the first woman to hold this position. CMW is the largest chapter of the American Association of Woodturners. I have demostrated for clubs in Maine, Tennessee, Virginia and online for the International Guild of Miniature Artisans.
Demo Topic:
Honey I Shrunk the Antiques
Tod Raines
I started woodworking in the 1990s making furniture and building cabinets for our home. I bought my first lathe in 2001 and was self-taught for the first couple of years. I then joined the Dallas Area Woodturners club. One of the most notable training classes I have attended was a weekend woodturning class by Al Stirt. These two days iwth Al Stirt really helped my woodturning skills while expanding my knowledge about form, function and how the wood grain and texture guides the woodtuning decisions.
Personally, I enjoy the immediate sponaneity of woodturning. The best part is that it only takes a small amount of time to complete a turned project (however, some can take much longer). This makes it easy to keep up with your turning hobby even among a busy work life.
Demo Topic:
Elevated Candy Dish - Natural Edge
Gary Rock
Demo Topic:
Wooden Top Birdhouse Ornaments
Paul Russell
Paul Russell is an artistic woodturner specializing in traditional, natural edge, thin turned bowls, boxes, platters, and dry vases. Paul has developed a new body of work (The Barely There Series) of Wabi-sabi style dry vases thriving on natural texture, negative space, that exploits voids, cracks, gaps and other irregularities – to create unique vessels. The vases are created from ethically harvested rare desert root burls, or bent (and/or forked) tree limb sections. His goal (as he says) is to ‘create one-of-a-kind pieces that you can build a room around.’ Each vessel has a story to tell. The pieces are both rough and polished, elegant and raw, with each angle offering more intrigue and discovery.
Demo Topic:
Barely There Vase
Alan Stratton
As a newly married graduate student, Alan Stratton needed furniture. He and his new wife, Gloria, wanted to make their own furniture and considered buying pre-made spindles for a living room set. After they realized this was beyond their student budget, Alan noticed a duplicator lathe in the university hobby shop and asked how to use it. He then went on to make a six piece living room set, a dining room table and several lamps. While worse for wear, these are still in use today.
After securing a job and living near Boston, Massachusetts, he noticed an ad in the newspaper for a lathe. Despite not having room in his two bedroom apartment, he purchased the old used Delta lathe which despite badly worn thrust bearings served him for many years.
Family and professional pursuits kept woodturning to a minimum for many years until he purchased a new Powermatic lathe and started attending club meetings.
In 2011, he created a weekly woodturning video channel, “As Wood Turns”, on YouTube. He credits this weekly commitment to driving him to continually learn and try new techniques and projects.
Alan specializes in turning a variety of unique and divergent projects.
He has created the Infinite Axis Chuck for eccentric woodturning and adapted previous multi-axis chucks to be cross compatible.
He has hosted 14 Christmas Ornament Woodturning Challenges which invite woodturners to video their Christmas Ornament creations.
He advocates that woodturners learn to hand turn spheres utilizing the octagon process and cup faceplates as a basic or foundation skill.
After over 600 videos, he is still committed to delivering his weekly woodturning video. He’s always looking to learn, create, and share new techniques.
Demo Topic:
Turning a Pumpkin Box
Clayton Thigpen
Clayton Thigpen is a full-time production turner from Madison, Mississippi. His work draws from a combination of his backgrounds as a graphic designer and website developer, attempting to find the perfect blend of creativity and technical prowess.
After joining the Magnolia Woodturners, Clayton became almost immediately immersed in turning. He has studied under some of the most prolific woodturners, such as Nick Cook, Sammy Long, and Mark Sillay. Whether it's traveling for demos, teaching in a more formalized setting as an (assistant) instructor at the John C. Campbell Folk School, or lighthearted presentations for elementary school field trips as a member of the Mississippi Craftsmen's Guild, his excitement for the actual process of woodturning is matched only by his enthusiasm for sharing anything and everything he knows about the craft.
Demo Topic:
Garden Fairy
Paul Tiefel
Middle school shop class was my first exposure to woodturning where I turned legs for a small table. It was all scraping with carbon steel tools (and a lot of sanding) but I remember the satisfaction of a successful project. In my teens I learned woodworking, carpentry, and other construction skills from my dad’s workshop and working on summer jobs for him and others.
Working as a journeyman carpenter helped me obtain a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering. During my 40+ year career in the Oil and Gas Industry I kept a small woodworking shop. After moving to North Texas in 2001, I started turning on an old Craftsman lathe but after trying a few attempts I realized my skills were severely lacking. I enrolled in a class at Woodcraft taught by John Horn and that became my introduction to the world of modern woodturning. I joined Woodturners of North Texas (“WNT”) and began learning as much as I could about tools, equipment, and techniques. I was honored to serve as president of WNT in 2005 and 2006.
I have been fortunate to take hands-on classes with a number of master woodturners. While I enjoy all spindle and bowl turning, I am intrigued by the complexity and challenge of multi-axis turning. It is fun to observe a variety of work and think about how one might possibly do something a little different. This is the process that led to the three-axes “Tipsy Snowman”.
Demo Topic:
Tipsy Snowman
Charles Tucker
Charlie Tucker spent 30 years in U.S. military service, retiring from the Air Force in 1992 in the rank of Colonel. In his last assignment, he was Director of Advertising for the Air Force. He holds a bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design from the University of Texas and a Master of Science degree in Public Relations from American University in D. C . His interest in arts and crafts traces its origin to a fountain pen given to him by his grandfather when he was 9 years old. Over the next 50 years he collected, repaired and traded FOUNTAIN pens. Then he attended a meeting of Dallas Area Woodturners and his focus expanded from pens to the broader realms of woodturning. During this session of SWAT, he will be demonstrating the design and creation of wood cremation urns. He is a member of AAW, the Dallas and Hunt County clubs, has served as a club officer and has demonstrated at several of the North Texas clubs. He has studied with Mike Mahoney, Stuart Batty, David Ellsworth, Derek Weidman, Curt Theobald, Jacques Vesery Jimmy Clewes, Trent Bosch, Ashley Harwood, and Sammy Long. He turns on a Robust American Beauty lathe.
Demo Topic:
Design & Create Custom Canes
Mark Wallace
I started my woodturning journey when my Father-In-Law gave me his Shopsmith in 1985. To get the spindle to a comfortable height, I had to put the Shopsmith on 8 inch concrete cinder blocks. When you were first turning a bowl from a log and neglected to turn the speed all the way down, that baby jumped all over the basement floor. In 1997 when Chrysler gave out their first profit sharing check, I upgraded my Lathe to a new Oneway 2024 which I used for 25 years until I upgraded to a Robust American Beauty. In the beginning I was primarily self taught. Sometime during the mid 2000’s I found the Blue Water Area Woodturners and joined. With the comradery and mentoring from the club, my turning skills began to improve. The first demo I gave was at Blue Water turning a three sided bowel using off-center turning. Wanting to support the club, I served on the board as secretary for a couple of years until we moved. Getting tired of driving 120 miles round trip to and from work we moved to Livonia where I joined the Huron Valley Woodturners and served as the treasurer for a year. In 2016 I moved over to the Detroit Area Woodturners where I have served as the membership clerk, 1st Vice President and also President. As president of the Detroit club I was able to lead them to put on a one day mini symposium. Participating in hands-on workshops and taking classes is a great way to learn new skills. I have been privileged to attend workshops led by Rudolph Lopez, Michael Hosalick, Jimmy Clewes, and Derek Weidman hosted by the Detroit Area Woodturners. Went to Traverse City to study with Lyle Jamison. I attended the Campbells Hands On Retreat for three years and I got to be mentored by Jim Williams, Kevin Bedgood, Jerry Mercer, Rebecca DeGroot, Linda Ferber, Sammy Long, Dave Kerley, and Andi Wolfe. I was able to attend Arrowmount and take a two week class with Nick Agar and Colin Way. The problem was that it got cut short when the whole class came down with Covid and they sent us home. Took the refunded tuition and signed up for a three day wall art class with Nick Ager in his Georgia studio. Another great learning experience I have had is to participate in different Interactive Remote Demos lead by Pat Carroll and Chris Parker. Thus far I have only attended two symposiums. The Utah Woodturning Symposium in 2018 and the Ohio Valley Woodturning Symposium in 2023.
Demo Topic:
Three or Six Sided Rose
SWAT 2025
SWAT 2025