Mill Creek resident masters the craft of wood turning

Mill Creek’s Denny Wetter has a sure way of knowing if his woodturning pieces are attractive.

When they aren’t so great, he simply can’t find them.

His wife, Judy, acts as the judge.

“Judy either finds where she wants to put it around the house, or she hides it,” he said. 

Judy Wetter obviously loves most of his work. A visit to their home reveals his work on display throughout the house.

At 71, Denny Wetter has worked with wood most of his life, but has been a woodturner since 1995, when his wife bought him a lathe for Father’s Day.

“When I was a teen, I would build with my dad (Jack Wetter),”  Denny Wetter said. “Then he passed away, so I had to maintain the house. It was an old house, so there were lots of things falling apart. We would have to replace the front porch all of the time because it rotted out.”

In retirement, Wetter’s woodworking has increased substantially.

Although he likes crafting goblets, pepper grinders and kaleidoscopes, he is most proud of his open segment bowls.

Those require an elaborate design process using computer-aided design.

“Each individual piece needs to be worked out, layer by layer,” he said. “If you are working with a solid piece of wood, you need to design the shape that you like, then you kind of let the wood dictate its shape a bit, too.”

Wetter’s work has been featured in the American Association of Woodturners magazine.

He enjoys working with wood because each piece has its own individual grain. He said each piece can bring uncertainties, and surprises.

“Depending on what you do with it, it can either turn into something that looks nice or be ugly,” he said. “I end up with a lot of pretty firewood.”

Wetter has one rule when it comes to his hobby: He refuses to sell any of this work.

He learned a lesson watching  his wife attempt to sell her crafted miniature dollhouses to pay for trips to conventions. Instead of starting projects she liked, she began to make craft items she could sell.

“It ended up turning her off,” Wetter said.

He said he wouldn’t enjoy making the same thing over and over.

“I see that in a lot of woodturners who sell things,” Wetter said. “They will make little soup bowls, pens and pepper grinders over and over again. When that happens, it’s not a hobby anymore — when you’re doing what you have to do to just pay the rent.”

He is more happy carving gifts.

He told a story of his daughter, Jamie Pionkowski, who lives in Wisconsin and was forced to cut down one of her favorite maple trees in her front yard.

He told her to bring him a section of the trunk, and he made a bowl for himself and for her.

“She loved it,” he said.