Galloway Woodturners

In just over a weeks time I’m walking the 96 mile West Highland Way with my son and a great bunch of friend. I’m raising money for two charities which have great importance to me.

MPN Voice who do great work in the research and support into myeloproliferative neoplasms, also called myeloproliferative disorders, are a spectrum of rare blood cancers. I was with diagnosed with one of these – Essential Thrombocythemia (ET) over 10 years ago. There is no current cure for ET but it can be managed through medication. It will be great to support the charity and their research into ET, in the hope of there one day being a cure.

Stewartry Sea Cadets – I have been involved with the sea cadets since I was 12 yrs old and it is a fantastic youth organisation, helping youngsters from 9 – 18 yrs old to develop at members of the community through commitment, loyalty, discipline, respect, honesty and Integrity.. Stewartry unit need to replace the roof and electrics to maintain a safe learning environment for the cadets to learn and develop these values.

If anyone would like to donate to my walk please use the link below. Thanks

Crowdfunding to Raise funds for MPN Voice and Stewartry Sea Cadets on JustGiving

The June Competition is “Make something of equal portions of two woods” and tonight’s entries meet the brief and are all well executed, so thanks to all who entered. There are again some excellent pieces of work, in both quality of finish and of form, well done everyone.

Voting is now closed. Thanks to all who entered and all who voted.

The winners are : Senior Stephen Eccles, and the novice Michael Jacob Well done to you both, you are worthy winners. If you did not win does not mean that your piece was any less worthy, it just means that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ and the voters were not looking at your piece properly.

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Senior 1.

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Senior 2.

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Senior 3.

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Senior 4. WINNER by Stephen Eccles

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Senior 5.

Rare earth magnet embedded between the two bowls.

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Senior 6.

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Senior 7.

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Senior 8.

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Novice 1.

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Novice 2.

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Novice 3. Winner – by Michael Jacob

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Members might be interested to see an unusual commission that I’ve just completed – an urn for a portion of someone’s cremation ashes. The club was contacted to see if any member could make this; Rolf asked a number of us and I was the one foolish enough to say I would have a go. The customer specified spalted beech wood and a gloss finish, not an easy combination. This is the result.

The finished size is about 9inches tall and just over 5 inches diameter. The button and drop finial inside the lid are ebony.  The outside has multiple coats of gloss acrylic lacquer, polished with burnishing cream. The lid is held on using a nitrile rubber ‘O’ ring as per the article for a coffee container in W/T 350. I experimented with using a screw thread cut from a plastic tumbler but decided not to use that because it would be difficult to maintain the grain match. I completed my test piece as a ‘flying saucer’ box and it is now for sale in the Artists and Makers shop in CD.

Thank you to all members for your patience waiting for the club to reopen, and keeping in touch with each other.

The pandemic is not over, and there is still no cure for the virus. There is still a large number of people who have not had the vaccination and are just at as much risk of death or serious illness as when the disease first struck 18 months ago, in addition there are several variants which are of greater concern than the first one discovered.

However things are slowly opening up and I have given a great deal of thought of how to get us back into the workshop safely. I firmly believe we can restart the ‘Tuesday and Thursday workshop sessions, as of Tuesday 25th May, without incurring any greater risk than we face in other places – provided we stick to certain rules.

We have sufficient safety procedures in place to allow a very limited return to the workshop, and I would urge you to read this very carefully, and decide if you are comfortable with this, if you can comply with the requirements, and if you can trust the other members of the club to comply.

It is up to every one of us to look after ourselves, and our fellow members. Washing our hands is still a key protection and I would ask you all to do so as soon as you come in, and last thing before you leave. Wash you hands also if you have shared tools or touched something that another member has recently touched. The wearing of masks is much more accepted than previously and we do require it whenever inside the workshop. There are a small number of people who are exempt from wearing a mask, and if you are in the company of an ‘unmasked’ turner just take a step back from them to give that extra ‘safe’ space. 

We are obliged to keep records of members attending for track and trace. Could you please set up your mobile phones, if you have one, so that when you come in you can ‘check in’, or you can do it before you come on your computer (or get your wife, husband, grandchild or manservant to do it for you). The data gathered is deleted automatically after 21 days if not needed. You can also register in the book as we always did.

Our first tentative opening would be Turning Tuesday and Turning Wednesday, and be limited to begin with to just 5 members each session. If we find that demand if high then we can open up on other evenings, or even mornings – but remember that this requires our committee members to be available and willing to come and open and lock up.

Please contact Bill or Jimmy (or email me) in order to book one of the 5 places on Tuesday 25th May, or 5 places on Thursday 27th May. I thank you for your patience and tolerance so far, we will get the normal monthly club meetings restarted as soon as possible.

WELCOME BACK rules

(check_in_Covid_19_A4_Poster) 

Here is the points situation after the fifth round. This month’s winners were Rolf Buwert and Andrew Hall.

Senior/ Mature:

Bill McCoskrie (25), Mick Schofield (22), Rolf Buwert (20), Colin Marshall (17), Stephen Eccles & David Simpson (12), Reg Thirlwall (4), Tom Florey (2), Arthur Young & Elwin Campbell (2), Ken Coates (1).

Junior/ Novice:

Andrew Hall (23), Michael Jacob (16), Christine Carson (6), Alyson Young (5), Jimmy Brown & Kenny Johnston (1).

The scoring system awards 6 points for 1st position, 5 for 2nd, 4 for 3rd. All other entries, including those with no votes, receive 1 point.

I hope those who attended the monthly demo last night enjoyed it and are inspired to make a whistle or two, in order to help you I have redrawn my notes in a more legible form.

This months theme is “Make a dish to hold the coins from your pocket, a coin tube or other money holder”.

We have another impressive set of entries, well done and thanks to everyone who submitted a piece. And thanks in advance to everyone who votes. Your votes are important and raises the standard of members work through your expression of preference.  

Please use your two votes, one for the senior entry and the other for the novice entry, by entering your choice in the box at the bottom, text message, Whatsapp or emailing me at buwert@tiscali.co.uk. If you vote for your own piece it will not be counted, so if your piece is clearly the best please give your vote to the second best.

Please vote today 11th May and I will add them up and announce the winner as soon as possible, either tonight or tomorrow morning. Late votes can not be counted as it causes confusion, so please vote today.

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Entry 1 (Senior)

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Entry 2 (Senior)

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Entry 3 (Senior)

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Entry 4 (Senior)

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Entry 5 (Senior)

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Entry 6 (Senior)

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Entry 7 (Senior)

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Entry 8,  (Senior)

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Entry 9 (Senior)

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Novice

Novice  Entry 1

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Novice  Entry 2

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Novice  Entry 3

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Novice  Entry 4

Thank you everyone for your continued patience and support in keeping the club alive during this prolonged lockdown.

The Scottish Government Government have a plan for returning to normality, stepping down the levels until we are back to ‘normal’.

I can see nothing which specifically applies to organisations such as ours, but if you can see something then I would be glad to hear from you. It looks like it will be July before we reopen, but as things can easily change the date may change forward or back. 

Please get in touch if you have any thoughts on when, and under what conditions you would be comfortable to return.

One of the conditions may be that you self test on the day of attending the club, which means that you would need to apply for a free testing kit from the following web site.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-getting-tested/pages/no-covid-symptoms/

Can I ask you all to obtain one of these kits and especially those of you who want to come on a one-to-one beginners woodturning course, which I am prepared to start again fairly soon. One of the conditions I will have for any course is that student and tutor have negative test results on the morning of the course. 

Before we meet as a club I expect government guidelines will permit ‘Turning Tuesday‘ and ‘Turning Thursdays‘ as per last year where up to 6 members can meet indoors provided certain conditions are met, and we will get this started as soon as we can.

By this date most of us will have had both vaccinations and we will be fairly confident of the protection this gives us however the virus which exists this year is slightly different to the one which started all this in March of last year and for that reason we continue to be careful and protect ourselves, our families and our fellow woodturners.

Please email me at rolf@buwert.com if you have any concerns or questions, or just want to say Hi, and let’s home we can meet again at the workshop very soon.

Rolf

A couple of photo’s  of the completed box from last Tuesday’s demo.  Pity about the broadband playing up – hopefully I have managed to rectify the problem I now have slightly better band width (whatever that means!)