It appears that spring is upon us ready or not. Now we are in the preparation mode, trimming, pruning, mowing, fertilizing, etc. and I hope you are still turning and learning new things on your lathe.
The club challenge for this month will be turn any item out of 2 (two) types of woods; they must be attached as one turning. There will be a secret ballot taken to determine the winner and the winner will receive a $20.00 gift certificate from Packard Woodworks.
To give you more time to plan for the club challenges in the next few months the steering committee has chosen the following challenges for your information.
MAY: This challenge will be to make your own tool. If you would like make a turning with it and bring it with you to the meeting along with your creation. The demonstration will be by Bill Bryan on how to make a genie bottle.
JUNE: The club challenge will be, make a genie bottle.
JULY: Make something that your spouse can use.
Sorry we ran out of time last month we had to many things scheduled. We will have the sharpening demo that we missed.
The demonstration for this month will be Sharpening by Al McCoy. He will have his grinder with his Wolverine attachment, the side grinding jig and his dressing tool and the jigs. The items needed to consistently achieve a sharp tool with the same bevel every time. You all keeping hearing the term “ride the bevel” he will attempt to help you understand this term. If you are having trouble sharpening a tool bring it to the meeting and we will help you get the edge to your liking. After Al’s demo we will have both lathes set up and have to demonstrations by Jack Diamond on how he uses his Skew. Robert McBroom will show us how he uses his skewchigouge that he made. You will be able to try out their method on the club lathes.
Don’t forget about “show and tell” bring your turnings to share with our members, share your ideas with each other.
The portion of the meeting that seems to be working better is the question and answer portion, so bring in your questions for our panel and get their answer. If you are trying to turn a certain thing on your lathe, and haven’t had much success, ask the panel to help you. No question is too hard; they will have the answer for you.
If you are interested in buying some Anchor Seal check out or web site.
We have on our website a section called the gallery; this is for each and every member to display their own turnings. The Steering committee discussed setting up a spot in our meeting room to help each member get good photos of their turnings for in their gallery. We are looking for a volunteer to help set up and design a booth for photographing the member’s turnings.
The steering committee talked about helping a charitable organization such as Hospice by making ornaments for on their Christmas tree, as done by the Flora Bama Cutups our local woodcarving organization. I called Bert Black of the cutups and he said that hospice had all the ornaments they needed at this time. Bert suggested that we contact another organization to help. Do any of you members have a suggestion as to an organization we can help? If you do call Al McCoy at 434-1687.