Mike Hubert turned his first bowl when he was in high school, and he says he has been turning seriously for 25 or 30 years. Hubert’s passion for wood turning and wood working is obvious in the big pile of wood that is drying in front of his workshop full of tools he has made and modified.

Hubert lives on West Armuchee Road in a log cabin that was part of the Hammontree Homestead, a former cotton plantation. He came to Walker County in 1982 as an industrial engineer with Roper Corporation. His hometown is Kankakee, Ill., 50 miles south of Chicago.

Hubert’s first wood turning products were projects for his mother when he was in high school. He says she wanted a nut bowl; so he made one. He also made a pedestal and ham-mer for her. It is a special piece that she gave back to him the year before she died.

So far, Hubert has gotten all of his wood from others. A local sawmill called about the big burl that is on the trailer behind his workshop because they knew Hubert would want it. When the utility company cuts trees, they call Hubert. He was also given some barn siding that he says he may laminate as an experiment.

One of the more interesting pieces of wood Hubert has drying is the huge burl. Though a burl is really a kind of canker in a tree, it produces a grain that Hubert says is not “nice and straight like oak.” He says sometimes flawed wood makes the most interesting bowls.

Hubert’s most popular bowl has a natural edge that still has the bark around the top. He says these are hard to make because the bottom is round while the top is the oblong shape of the wood. New for Hubert is the time-consuming process of working with laminate and seg-mented wood, which produces bowls with contrasting pieces. He also makes wooden jewelry boxes.

This summer, Hubert taught wood turning at the Lookout Mountain Camp for Boys. He taught three days a week for eight weeks. The boys learned to work with wood and made goblets and gavels.

Hubert is mostly a self-taught wood turner. He reads books, watches videos and says he has spent many hours standing at the lathe. He took seminars from Rude Osolnik, the late nationally-acclaimed wood turner from Berea, Ky.

Hubert also creates his own tools. He made a scraper by grinding an Allen wrench and used roller skate wheels in creating a tool to steady the bowl as he turns it. In Hubert’s opin-ion, there is no need to pay lots of money for a tool that he can make or modify.

Wood turning has not been Hubert’s only interest. He was a professional dragster driver in the mid-1970s and now restores cars in his workshop. He has a 1936 Ford pickup that he brought from Illinois, a 1964 Ford Fairlane, a 1986 Mustang and “Altered Ego,” a hand-built replica of a 1923 Model T Roadster.

The smell of freshly-cut wood and the piles of wood shavings by Hubert’s lathe are the evidence of a wood turning workshop, and the bowls and boxes and tools are evidence of an inventor who never tires of creating.

A variety of Hubert’s work can be found in the Foothills Gallery in LaFayette. The gallery is on U.S. 27 at 103 Main Street across from the Marsh House, and it is open Thursday – Sat-urday 10-5 and Sunday 1-5. The web address is http://www.foothillsgallery.org/zenphoto2/ . Join the Facebook group: Northwest Georgia Arts Guild--Foothills Art Gallery.