Photos by Christiaan Blok Ron Goble poses near a work in progress in his Scottsdale garage studio. His segmented woodturned vessels are composed of hundreds of tiny pieces of mostly exotic wood.

Woodturner Ron Goble assembles multiple segments of wood into vessels with a Contemporary bent

Each of Ron Goble’s wooden vessels is an original creation—and he has decided not to duplicate a single one, no matter how much a client might admire its Contemporary Southwestern-style design. “What I enjoy is making new things, the creativeness of it,” he explains. “I love seeing my pieces take form from little pieces of wood.”

The Scottsdale craftsman is fascinated by his precise art form—segmented woodturning—which is a method of shaping an object from hundreds of small sections of wood that are glued together and finished to produce a single, smooth surface. It is a medium that requires the artist to use both hemispheres of the brain: the right to visualize and invent, and the left to turn all the little rectangles, like three-dimensional puzzle pieces, into a seamless work of art.

Four years ago, Goble knew little about artistry and nothing about woodturning. He had retired and was looking for a hobby. “I raised four kids and managed several J.C. Penney stores most of my life,” he relates. “I never did anything creative. Then one day, my wife, Kathy, wanted some stained glass and I said, ‘Let me try to do that.’ I took a class, which was my first artistic endeavor—unless you count the crayon drawings that won prizes in my elementary school art show,” he quips.

Goble fashioned several glass panels but soon ran out of places to put them. Then he asked his father to teach him about painting, a hobby his dad had pursued after his own retirement. A friend who screens applicants for the American Watercolor Association had praised Goble’s work, but graphic art wasn’t his preferred medium.

Meanwhile, a friend had given him a lathe, a machine that turns and smoothes wood. It languished in his garage, since Goble’s only prior woodworking experience consisted of making little bowls with his uncle when he was a boy in Indiana. Then one Saturday he happened to watch a program about segmented woodturning on the DIY Network channel. Suddenly, he was inspired. He tried his hand at woodturning and soon owned a hollowing tool, three saws, a drill press, sanders with an array of jigs, and a new lathe. The garage became his studio, wood his paint and canvas, and the new tools his brushes.

Broken Arrow (left), 7"H x 11"W, is made of 796 pieces of wood and is the companion piece to Crossed Arrows (right), 8.25"H x 8.5"W, crafted of 730 pieces of wood.

As Goble recalls his school years, he is not surprised that he was drawn to the precise craft of woodworking. He ties this aptitude to confidence he gained from his high school drafting teacher, the most important mentor he ever had. After four years in this teacher’s classes, Goble pursued the study of architecture in college, although he never practiced the profession.

Goble describes segmented woodturning in architectural terms, noting, “I build a curved vase from sharp-edged elements. My ability to create what I want depends on precise measurement and engineering drawings.” He remembers, “At first, I did two or three small pieces without drawings, but I couldn’t get my shape. Now when I start, I know the dimension of every piece of wood to the sixteenth of an inch or less.” He even developed a virtual book of ideas and conceptual drawings. “I may never get through them all,” he figures.

But even precise drawings have limitations, says Goble. “My eye tells me what to do as I progress. The material shapes the work, and vice versa.” As he proceeds, he matches the wood grain horizontally, to prevent uneven expansion and contraction of individual pieces. And his intricate designs? “The shape of the vessel determines the patterns I select,” he explains, adding, “I often look to Native American pottery and rugs for ideas and give them a Contemporary spin.”

Incorporating these designs into the vessel is a matter of planning and measuring, because even the smallest figure is composed of multiple wood segments. Goble makes prototypes of them to be sure that the colors and forms will work. “Occasionally we have to depart from the blueprint,” he jokes, “and we call that a ‘design opportunity.’”



Color, which Goble sets lavishly into his background, depends on the woods he uses. “Until I worked with exotic woods, I didn’t understand that there are few limitations on what you can do with natural color,” he says. “I discovered orange wood, African blackwood, iridescent bloodwood,  and holly—which is white if it’s cut in the winter but turns blue later—and purple heart, common in South America.” Goble contends that the textures created by the various woods are “visual rather than real,” since the actual surfaces are always sleek.

In the final stages of assembling a vessel, he shapes each of two 12-ring layers on his lathe, inside and out. “The lathe turns all the sharp edges into curves,” he relates. The vessel is then sanded with high-grit sandpaper, sprayed with eight to 10 coats of lacquer, and polished perfectly smooth with a mixture of linseed oil and pumice.