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lead Christiansen has collected so much wood over the years, he’ll probably never be able to use it all. But the wood he does use is transformed into everything from table legs to letter openers, from wall art to pet urns.?

“You never know what you’re going to get out of a piece of wood until you get into it,” Christiansen said. “You can be pleasantly surprised, or say ‘Aw shucks,’ and have to go back to the drawing board again.” ?Christiansen, a master turner with a shop in North Ogden, will be demonstrating his skill at creating art from wood on Saturday at the North Ogden Arts Festival. The festival starts at 9:30 a.m., and continues until 5:30 p.m., at North Ogden City Park, 2685 N. 500 East. Admission is free.?Wood turning is done on a lathe, with the wood spinning quickly while the artist shapes it using chisels and gouges. ?In addition to demonstrating wood turning, Christiansen has been invited to show and sell his work at the festival. Folks in need of a cane can buy a fancy one made to resemble a rope. There will also be useful, but beautifully grained, wooden key chains, fancy bottle stoppers, duck calls, pens, bracelets, salt and pepper grinders, bowls and hand mirrors. He’s even made a combination shoehorn/back scratcher, with a turned-wood handle. ?Some of Christiansen’s artwork is made of local wood, like box elder trees, but he also has art with more history — several pieces are made from trees brought down by Hurricane Katrina.

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Turned on to turning?

A seventh-grade shop class introduced Christiansen to wood turning.?”So it’s been a century or so ago,” he said with a laugh.?He continued taking classes through high school, but then turned his attention to earning a degree in electronic technology. After graduating from college in 1971, Christiansen found he was more interested in working with wood than electronics.?”Once you get hooked, it kind of stays there,” he said.?He made his first wood-turning lathe in 1976, and made table pedestals and porch columns for local manufacturers and builders. At that time, most wood turning was for architectural purposes; in the early 1980s, turners started creating art.?”When I started in full time, and was trying to do art along with the architectural turning I was doing at the time, I used scraps from the furniture to make wooden vessels or vases.” ?Christiansen says there weren’t as many tools for wood turning back in those days.?”I’m kind of mechanically inclined, I suppose, so I was able to make things,” he said.”I got one patent for an accessory to a lathe.”?When Christiansen decided to try turning tagua nuts into urns, there were no tools that would work. He used old dental tools and reshaped allen wrenches to work on the small palm nuts, which can be made to look like ivory.?

Traveling turner?

People in the East were willing to pay more for turned wood art than Utah collectors, Christiansen said. “I like living here, so I traveled.”?He’d spend the winter turning wood, then hit the road for two or three weeks at a time to sell his work at art shows.?”I had never gotten into a dust storm, until I went to Midland, Texas,” Christiansen said. “I’ve been in downpours and tornadoes, and whatever else Mother Nature can bring up to try to ruin your work.” ?He says he also met a lot of great people on the road, but after 15 years of celebrating Thanksgiving in a motel room — washing down store-bought pumpkin pie with Pepsi — he got tired of it. ?These days, Christiansen stays home, doing architectural production work in his North Ogden shop. Of course, he still makes art on the side.?

Master turner?

Turning wood into art isn’t easy. ?”If I don’t cut the right thickness, I could go through a portion of the wood,” Christiansen said. ?Working with green wood is difficult because the turner has to do the job from start to finish, without a big break, so that it doesn’t dry unevenly and warp or split — which it may do anyway.?Turning a hollow form, like an urn, presents a special challenge.?”You might be working in a hole the size of a quarter … but it might be 12 inches inside, and all the material has to be brought out through that tiny hole,” he said.?Christiansen has taught at wood-turning symposiums and classes across the country. He also helped start the Utah Chapter of the American Association of Woodturners, and the local Golden Spike Chapter meets in his shop.?”I’ve been lucky that I’ve been able to do all the different aspects of wood turning, and not stayed in one little area or one design shape,” he said. “I could enjoy all of it, and I’ve always been able to achieve most of the things I took on to do.”?