Author Archives: Phil Jones

I am the former treasurer and website manager of the Galloway Woodturners club. I also enjoy bodging occasionally. In my spare time I work as an analyst programmer for Dumfries and Galloway Council.

Wood Prep Weekend 10-11 August 2024

In an attempt to tackle the large pile of wood that’s sitting outside the club under a tarp, I will be at the workshop for a whole of wood prep.

I will have the workshop open between 10am and 4pm on both Saturday 10th and Sunday 11th of August. If you have time you are welcome to join me. Come and go any time and stay for as long or as little as you like. There will be plenty to do and you don’t need any experience with chainsaws or anything.

The main aims of the weekend are:

  • Clear the wood pile from the carpark.
  • Organise all our wood into something we can sell to members.

I think we’ll need broadly 3 groups:

  1. Logs to planks
    1. Outdoor chainsaw work, cutting larger pieces along the grain into manageable planks
  2. Planks to blanks
    1. Cutting chunks and planks of wood on the bandsaw so they’re ready for turning.
    2. Sealing them with wax to reduce the chances of splitting.
  3. Storage, pricing and presentation
    1. Working out how best to store planks outside
    2. Working out how best to store blanks inside
    3. Working out what we should be charging for different bits of wood

Look forward to seeing you there.

Phil J.

Apologies!

Our apologies to everyone who’s been bombarded with emails from us in the last few days. The site is supposed to send notifications whenever a new item is posted and people have been complaining for a while that they haven’t been getting them. We’ll it seems that they’ve all been sitting in a queue (with some items dating back to 2020) and when we restarted the service it started working through the backlog. I stopped the service this morning and found out how to clear the backlog so hopefully everything should now be working properly.

Apologies again, and please visit the site to see if you’ve missed any recent posts.

Regards, Phil Jones

New Year Resolution

Happy New Year everyone!

Last year I made a new year resolution to enter every competition of 2022. I wasn’t aiming to win or anything, I just wanted to give myself a bit of a push. A year on and I think I’ve achieved the following:

  1. Did more turning
  2. Tried lots of things I wouldn’t have tried otherwise
  3. Contributed to the interesting turnings that members can see at club meetings
  4. Improved my turning enormously

I think I’ll try and do the same again in 2023 and it would be great if this inspires more members to do the same, especially if you’re only a beginner.

Remember it’s not about winning, it’s just about taking part, trying new things and improving over the year.

Good luck and best wishes for the new year,
Phil J