KEITH GOTSCHALL
Born in Chicago, Ill. in 1962, Keith lived in the Midwest until 1980. In 1981 he moved to Boulder Co. and began a career in woodworking. After an informal apprenticeship in several different wood shops Keith started his own design and fabrication studio in 1989. Building furniture mostly on a commission basis, Keith also stretched his talents by doing the occasional speculative piece that would be shown in art galleries or in fine art shows. He has won numerous awards around Colorado.
Keith is also a sculptor of stone. Using marble and alabaster from the area Keith has also won many awards for his sculpture. His work tends to be of a figurative nature, often abstracting the human form. In 1998 Keith visited with a local wood turning friend who let him play around with some of his tools and showed him some of the more modern theories behind wood turning. Remembering that the lathe was the reason he became interested in woodworking in the first place, Keith was keen to pursue wood turning from that moment on. After studying with recognized masters like Richard Raffan, Mike Mahoney, and Stuart Batty, he now does work for galleries and private clients.
Keith was the artist featured in a Discovery channel show hosted by Lynette Jennings. (episode 142) He has also been a featured demonstrator at the prestigious BYU Woodturning Symposium in Provo Utah in 2002 and 2008. A featured demonstrator for the 2005 AAW symposium in Kansas, Portland Oregon in 2007, Hartford CT in 2010, Tampa FL in 2013, Again in Portland in 2018. He was asked to present for the impressive Australian symposium in 2018, and thoroughly enjoyed a visit down under! A visit to Saratoga Springs for the Totally Turning symposium was the first visit in 2019. He has taught classes at the John C Campbell folk school in North Carolina, Craft Supply woodturning school in Utah, the Anderson Ranch in Colorado, and also the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Maine. Keith continues to teach and demonstrate for many different clubs and organizations around the country as well. He has contributed to the AAW magazine American Woodturner, Woodturning Design, and the British magazine Woodturning. As well he has been asked to jury several competition/exhibitions of woodturning and furniture. Keith’s work was shown at the 2004 BYU art museum show and the accompanying book “Beneath the Bark”. His work is also found in the book “500 Bowls”.
He now lives in the small mountain community of Salida, in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. His home and studio are at the base of the continental divide, and he shares them with his wife Catherine. An avid rock climber, hiker, and moto rider, Keith is often found outdoors enjoying Colorado’s rugged beauty.
Demonstration Topics
Manhole Cover Box
With an enigmatic title, simply put, this is a square box that is turned on the lathe, with a fitted lid that looks like a cast iron Manhole Cover. This is a simple intermediate level project that is perfect for some easy embellishment. The cover of the box “tips” up to open, revealing the treasures inside. Though not apparent at first, once the “secret” of opening is discovered, it will become a favorite to make and share.
In this demo you will learn:
- How to process the kiln dried stock for the square box.
- Various ways of using a 4-jaw chuck to mount and re-mount the project.
- Use of Bowl gouge, skew, and scraper to hollow out the cross-grain box.
- A unique method of construction for opening a lid without a protruding handle.
- Cutting with and against the grain, with dialog about how that works.
- Tool design, how to modify standard scrapers for better use.
- Free hand sharpening of the tools used.
- Simple aids for indexing on the lathe.
- Texturing, using both rotary carvers and wood burners.
- Coloring with dyes and graphite.
Off Center platter
In this demo an off-center platter will be turned, using all the traditional techniques that one would use for a normal platter. But in addition, we will go one step further and go “off-center” to make a very unique turning. I will use a 4-jaw chuck in the expansion mode to show how I go about making an off center turning without the use of specialized equipment. Correct tool techniques will be emphasized. All the safety considerations and design potentials will be shown and discussed. This is a lively demo, with some possibility of crowd input on the final form.
Spindle to bowl demo
In this information rich demo, we will explore both spindle turning and bowl turning. The techniques of one are easily transferred to the other and I will show you how. We will go over grain direction and how that informs the direction of cut, and how that makes such a huge difference to the outcome of your project. Traditional turning techniques will be explored, and all the basic tools will be shown in use. Have trouble making beads or coves? I will show you how to improve your shape and make it easier to get reliable results. In bowl turning, these same ideas come into play. In the end we will have a winged bowl that has been turned both as a spindle and a bowl; a very traditional Scottish vessel called a “Quaich” that is used for ceremonial purposes. Very exciting!
Tortilla Warmer
First, what is a tortilla warmer? Well, it’s nothing you plug in, it is a simple container to hold pre-warmed tortillas, crepes, pancakes etc. so that they retain some of their heat and delectability! It is in essence a large, lidded bowl. This is a great intermediate project for anyone to tackle. I will go through the entire project from start to finish, with all the steps clearly shown and explained. Starting with planning the project, wood selection, the tools used and how I sharpen them, basic steps to start off and roughing in the basic form of the top. Making the rest of the project is the bulk of the demo, there are lots of tips of how the tools are being used. 3 different tools and methods of work are shown during the hollowing out of the interior, and the spindle gouge is used to great effect in making the fine details of the knob. With all that finished, I go into a method of decoration that is simple and easy to do.
