Artistic Woodturners of NW Florida
April 2004 Newsletter

I have been asked to fill in for Al and write this month's newsletter. Al went out of town to be with his mother who is in the hospital. Please keep Al, his mother, and his family in your thoughts and prayers
during this difficult time.

The next club meeting is Saturday, April 17th at 9 am at the Woodman of the World Lodge at 9050 Ashland Ave.  For this meeting, we will have guest demonstrator Nick Cook.  Nick Cook is an internationally renowned professional woodturner, demonstrator, and teacher.  The cost for attending the Nick Cook demonstration is $10 for members and $15 for non-members.

Due to an unfortunate scheduling conflict, the Sunday, April 18th session with Nick Cook had to be canceled.  He will only be here on Saturday, April 17th.  If time permits Nick may cover some of the material planned for the Sunday session on Saturday.  We apologize for the cancellation and hope it does not inconvenience anyone.  We are still very excited about having Nick Cook on Saturday, April 17th and hope you will come to see him and bring a friend or two.

The Club Challenge for May is to turn anything you like, but turn it without the use a commercially available chuck.  You can use faceplates, turn between centers, use waste blocks, glue blocks, or jam fit waste blocks, or you can use any homemade holding device or jig that you like.  Then for show and tell, show the item you made and explain how you made it.  If you come up with an interesting or unusual homemade device, bring it for show and tell too.  We are hoping to see some interesting new devices and ideas.  The purpose of this challenge is to demonstrate that you can turn anything you want to turn without using a chuck.  I'm hoping for a table full of show and tell items to demonstrate this.

The club is continuing to grow and this is very exciting.  Please remember to try to make all members feel welcome especially the newer members.  Also remember that the Woodmen have been very generous to rent
us the use their lodge at a very reasonable rate.  We need to make sure that we leave the facility as clean as we found it.  Unfortunately, the cleanup responsibilities have been falling on the same three or four individuals every meeting.  Let's try make an effort to maintain a level of cleanliness throughout the day by cleaning up after ourselves and attempting to not track shavings from the turning demo all over the building.  In addition, we would also like to form three or four cleaning teams so the same people will not have to clean the facility after every meeting.  Each team would have four or five members and the teams would rotate their cleaning duty.  Cleaning responsibilities include storing the demo lathe(s) and equipment, vacuuming the floor,
and cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms.  There will be a sign-up sheet if you would like to volunteer to be on a clean up crew.  Remember, the more people that volunteer, the less frequently your team will have to clean up.  Many hands make light work.

Don't forget to check out the club web pages from time to time.  The
address is http://www.artisticwoodturners.com.

See you at the meeting.