I am planning to be at the workshop on Friday 23 May to spend some time tidying up the wood stores outside. This will involve chainsaw and bandsaw work to plank logs and prepare bowl and spindle blanks.
Depending on time and progress I might also spend some time getting signs and things ready for our big events at the weekend.
I’ll be there from 10am until I’ve had enough. Feel free to join me if you fancy it.
Tonight we welcome Chris Pouncy from Robert Sorby who will demonstrate their latest ‘goodies’ and try to persuade us that we really need them ! If you asked Roger to place an order for you, you should be able to collect it from Chris during break.
The competition item is ‘Any item of your choice’ and the Wood of the Month is Sycamore.
As you will know by now, we have the entire contents of a life long woodworker’s workshop For Sale. Information on the 67 lots and how to view and bid have been circulated by email and are on the Club web site. Note that bidding closes at 8pm on Tuesday 20 May. Successful bidders pay for their lots then and may remove goods. We need all purchased goods removed by Friday 23rd as we need to get set up for the weekend.
Only a couple of weeks until our major event of the year over the Spring Fling weekend. We have an advert for this in the Spring Fling brochure (20,000 copies) and in the May edition of The Bulletin which is delivered to every address in the Stewartry (12,730 copies).
Saturday 24 May. Full day demo by famous artistic turner Margaret Garrard. Tickets are available tonight from Phil J, £10 each including lunch and tea/coffee etc during breaks. Copies of the poster have been circulated by email featuring one of her superb pierced bowls. Extra copies are available tonight, at least display one in your car window.
Sunday 25 May, Monday 26 May. Watch, try and buy. This is for the public to come and see what woodturning is about, for us to recruit new members, and make some money. We are planning . . . .
Demonstrations by Club members.
Have-a-go sessions, buy a piece of wood for £1 or £2 and make a bud vase or tea light holder, guided by an experienced turner. Everything provided.
Make a wooden ball point pen for £5, again with a bit of help.
Exhibition and Sale of Members work.
Display and information about the club.
A raffle on each of Sunday and Monday.
Tea/coffee and traybake available all day for £1.50.
There are still plenty of opportunities for YOU to help. If you can only come for half of one of the days, that’s fine as we have split each day into morning and afternoon sessions. We’ll pass the clipboard around so that you can add your name.
We would appreciate some donations of home baking – please let David S know what and how many portions you can contribute.
We will need a few nice pieces to create a small exhibition of work; and lots of pieces to sell. These you can either donate all the proceeds to the Club, or we can sell on your behalf with the Club taking just a 20% commission. Everyone should be able to make at least one piece – exactly what is up to you. That way we should get a good range of items.
There should be an article and picture about our Lottery grant in Woodturning magazine, issue 267.
June
The topic for the June meeting is a demo of making Mallets with Phil J. The competition item is a plate for FOOD use – think about the implications of this. The Wood of the Month is Yew
Roger is organising some have-a-go sessions for a local Scout troop in June, the dates are Thursday 5, 12 and 19. He has a few volunteer tutors but could use more. If you can help, please contact Roger.
And finally . . .
A couple of dates for your diaries . . . .
Saturday 12, Sunday 13 July the Club will be at the Kirkcudbright Country Fair.
Saturday 2 August we will be at the Dumfries Show.
Volunteers to help at either event would be welcome.
We keep in touch with many of you by email which means that Roger has been maintaining distribution lists and Phil J has been keeping a list of paid up members. This duplication of lists has caused extra work and confusion over who has THE list of members. We have a web site that enables us to put information on the site and the site will automatically email registered users that new info. is available. In future we will use this facility and Roger will NOT send out emails or maintain distribution lists.
This means that if you want to continue to receive info. about the Club YOU NEED TO REGISTER ON OUR WEB SITE. This is a very simple two minute task – all you need to enter is your name and email address, and to specify a password.
We want to give members more opportunity to use the Workshop so we are going to open on Monday evenings as well as Tuesday, starting from Monday August 4.
Roger has been working on the programme of professional demos for next year; possible names are Nikos Siragas, Sue Harker, Philip Greenwood and Dave Atkinson. This year the attendance at the first demo was good but the attendance at the second, by Andrew Hall, was considerably less. It costs at least £300 to bring a professional to Galloway therefore we need to sell 30 tickets to cover this cost. If members are not interested in professional demos then the Club will not waste time, effort and money by arranging them.
By show of hands a large majority of members pledged to support a programme of professional demos next year.
The Club has bought 3 face plate rings (to fit both the Patriot and SuperNova chucks), a bowl caliper and a vessel caliper from Robert Sorby. The other jaw sets for our Evolution chuck (for the big Jet lathe) have arrived – 114mm Piranha jaws and O’Donnell jaws. We now have a good range of jaws for our chucks which will enable members to tackle a wide range of projects.
Apologies to anyone subjected to a phishing scam from our website today. I turned on the option to allow people to register on the site and within a couple of hours we got three dodgy registrations, one or all of which appear to have been malicious.
I have now turned the option to register off and deleted the offending accounts.
Registration for this website will now have to be done manually. I will register all current members shortly and any member of the committee will be able to register new members in the future.
Apologies again for any inconvenience.
Congratulations this month to Phil Howard! Full results here: Competition May 2014
The Workshop will be open from 6.30 till 9.30 tonight, Tuesday 13 May, to allow members more time to view the auction lots and enter bids.
We have the entire contents of a life long woodworker’s workshop For Sale. The Club is organising the sale and will retain a commission for Club funds on everything sold.
Timetable
Tuesday 29 April 7pm – 9pm Viewing and bidding starts
Tuesday 6 May 7pm – 9pm Viewing and bidding
Tuesday 13 May (Club meeting) 6.30pm – 9.30pm Viewing and bidding
Tuesday 20 May 7pm Viewing and bidding. Bids close at 8pm. Successful bidders pay for their lots and may remove goods.
Friday 23 May All purchased goods must be removed.
Procedure
Full details of bidding process and end dates of the forthcoming Mellow Auction are to follow, but here is the list of lots that members will be able to bid against from next Tuesday (29/05/14).
The results are in and congratulations to Bryan Jardine!
For those of a suspicious nature, please note that Bryan’s result was entirely down to a fine piece of work and nothing whatsoever to do with me negotiating a price with him on a new lawn mower 😉
Martin Pidgen is demonstrating this Sunday, 13 April at Border Woodturners in Brampton. He will be making a skeleton clock, diamond bowl, wine bottle holder, light pulls and bottle stoppers. Sales of wood and accessories. 10am – 4pm, price £6 on the door for members of other Clubs, buffet lunch is available for £2.
Galloway Woodturners members will be made most welcome.
Border Woodturners, Brampton Community Centre, Union Lane, Brampton, CA8 1BX
April
This month the topic is a ‘Show and Tell’ evening, so I hope you have brought a favourite turning, home made chuck, jig or gadget to tell us about it. If you haven’t brought anything it will be a short meeting !!
The competition item is whatever you managed to make from the chunk of wood you ‘won’ in the draw last month. The Club would like to keep all these entries for sale at future events. When marking these, members need to take the raw material into account.
The Wood of the Month is Oak.
The new bandsaw is assembled and ready for use in what should be a temporary location because it is next to an existing 20Amp socket. We need to put some policies and procedures in place to minimise the risks associated with using such a large and powerful saw. In the meantime, if you want to use it ask Roger or Phil H to give you an introduction.
Roger is organising some have-a-go sessions for a local Scout troop this month, dates to be confirmed. He has a few volunteer tutors but could use more. If you can help, please contact Roger.
The Power Tool, Woodworking & Garden Machinery Show is on at The Lanark Agricultural Centre, Hyndford Road, ML11 9AX on Friday 25th April and Saturday 26th April. Free admission and parking. Register on their website www.websterpowerproducts.co.uk .
May
In May we welcome Chris Pouncey from Robert Sorby who will demonstrate their latest ‘goodies’ and try to persuade us that we really need them ! Chris will bring most of the Sorby tool range with him, but if you want to order anything in particular, let Roger know ASAP.
The competition item is ‘Any item of your choice’ and the Wood of the Month is Sycamore.
Advance notice for probably our major event of the year over the Spring Fling weekend at the end of May. We have an advert for this in the Spring Fling brochure (20,000 copies) and in the May edition of The Bulletin which is delivered to every address in the Stewartry (12,730 copies).
Saturday 24 May. Full day demo by famous artistic turner Margaret Garrard.
Sunday 25 May, Monday 26 May. Watch, try and buy. This is for the public to come and see what woodturning is about, for us to recruit new members, and make some money. We are planning . . . .
Demonstrations by Club members.
Have-a-go sessions, buy a piece of wood for £1 or £2 and make a dibber or bud vase, guided by an experienced turner. Everything provided.
Make a wooden ball point pen for £5, again with a bit of help.
Exhibition and Sale of Members work.
Display and information about the club.
A raffle on each of Sunday and Monday.
Tea/coffee and traybake available all day for £1.50.
We will need help from YOU for all of these. If you can only come for half of one of the days, that’s fine as we have split each day into morning and afternoon sessions. Phil H has a list of the opportunities so please come and talk to me
We will need a few nice pieces to create a small exhibition of work; and lots of pieces to sell. These you can either donate all the proceeds to the Club, or we can sell on your behalf with the Club taking just a 20% commission. Everyone should be able to make at least one piece – exactly what is up to you. That way we should get a good range of items.
There should be an article and picture about out Lottery grant in Woodturning magazine, issue 267. We have sent a similar piece to a few of the local papers but I’ve not seen it published yet, at least not in the Galloway News.
And finally . . .
The multi-sided diamond honing block is still missing from the workshop. Several people have looked for it without success. Please would everyone have a look in their toolbox, bag, workshop etc to see if it has been picked up by accident and return it ASAP.
Roger has been negotiating with Simon Hope to obtain a supply of sanding arbours at keen prices. Watch this space . . . . .
We have the entire contents of a life long woodworker’s workshop For Sale. The Club will organise the sale and keep a commission for Club funds on everything sold. We collected the items from storage last Thursday but have not yet sorted them out into lots. Judith has a list of most of the items which we’ll put on the notice board – it includes a Record CL4 variable speed lathe, Fox bandsaw, Kity Bestcombi machine, drills, planes, sanders and much more.
Each lot will have a bid sheet with a minimum bid specified. You will be able to view and bid at the next few Turning Tuesdays, then we’ll arrange for a sale day, probably one Saturday. Highest bid by the deadline on the sale day buys that lot.
The next Committee Meeting is on Tuesday 22nd April at The Workshop. If members want to raise anything, please contact any Committee member.