Background

Michael Roper is a professional woodturner and woodturning teacher who currently teaches at the Red Rocks Community College Fine Woodworking program. Roper is a third generation carpenter who fell in love with woodturning during his Associate of Applied Sciences degree at Red Rocks.

Roper is the winner of the following awards: 2010 and 2012 Educational Opportunity Grant, April 2011 Turning Challenge (Front Range Woodturners), 2010 Collegian Award, 2011 Collegian Excellence Award (American Association of Woodturners) , and 2011 1st Place Art Sculpture  (Denver County Fair). His work has been featured in Woodturning Magazine (Oct 2012 no 45 pg 76), American Woodturner (Oct 2011 no 5 pg 1)

Mission

Roper Woodturning is dedicated to providing the highest quality products as well as in-depth education in the field of woodturning.

Roper’s Work

Roper often chooses the pieces of wood that no other woodturner would dream of turning. Many of his best projects came from wood pieces that were the last on the table, pieces that were discarded by the rest of the woodturning community as ‘ugly’ or ‘impossible to turn’. Roper is constantly pushing himself to grow as a woodturner, his favorite projects are the ones other woodturners told him he couldn’t do.

Teaching

Since Roper became a teacher at Red Rocks so soon after his graduation in the Fine Woodworking program, he had an intimate understanding of what it is like to be a student, and used that to improve his personal teaching style. Roper looks to understand the strengths and weaknesses in each of his students to help them imrpove. He is incredibly encouraging and enthusiastic, giving both technical insight and constructive criticism to woodturners that want to make it to the next level.

Roper has also begun to film simple woodturning tutorials and post them on his tutorial page as well as youtube.

Press

Recently, Roper’s work has been discovered by different art enthusiasts and appreciators across the web: