Minutes for January 15, 2013 meeting
of the Tennessee Valley Woodworkers
President Kevin Deuermeyer called the meeting to
order at 7:00 PM.
- Members in attendance: (56)
- Guests: (0)
- New Members: (1) Jim Poteet, Manchester
Reminders:
- President Deuermeyer reminded all guest to sign the
guest sheet.
- General meeting always on the third Tuesday of each
month
- Carvers meeting are always the first Saturday of each
month
- Signup for the Super Door Prize. A clipboard was
passed around for members to signup for the grand door prize to be presented
at the Christmas party.
Club events for 2013:
- Club Picnic will be in May.
- Turning Bee is
TBA.
- Coffee County Fair will be the 3rd Week in
September.
- Christmas Party will be 1st Friday in
December.
- University of the South Exposition will be May 19-26,
2013.
- Seminars, Workshops, Shop Tours are all TBA.
Carvers Event:
- Meetings are held at Phil Bishops shop the 1st
Saturday of each month
- Cornbread Festival will be at the end of April.
- Dogwood Festival is held in early May.
- Polly Crockett Festival will be in mid September.
- Huntsville Show will be sometime in November or
December.
Announcements:
- President Deuermeyer reminded the membership that dues
for the 2013 year are due and payable to Bob Addington.
- Dan Maher encouraged participation in the Exposition
to be held at the University of the South inside the Sewanee Gallery on May
19-26, 2013. A signup sheet was passed around, and those interested in
showing their items were asked to sign and state what and how many. It was
noted that participation is traditionally for TVW members only.
- Karen Kersce Browning passed around a flier asking for
names of talented individuals you might know who would make an interesting
future programs If you know such a person or have a program suggestion,
Karen would like to hear from you.
- Loyd Ackerman announced that 55 or 56 folks have
registered for the Forum since the recovery. That is more than before the
crash. Get on and join the fun.
- Ross Roepke requested items to be sold at benefit
auctions for two local causes. A sale to support the Trinity Care Center
will take place on February 2. A Motlow College charity event is scheduled
for May 2. Call Ross if you have items.
- President Deuermeyer spoke about the Patriot
Woodworker Project, woodworkers with a cause, and their support of
Houses for Our Troops (they currently have four building projects in
Tennessee) and the Wounded Warrior Project. The incorrectly listed
link was corrected to be
www.patriotwoodworker.com .
- T.A.W. Symposium (Tennessee Association of Wood
Turners) will be held in Nashville on Jan 25 & 26, 2013. Chuck Taylor
believes he needs a pickup truck to haul home the lathe he plans to win.
- Greg Myers solicited participants in Panoplay to be
held in Huntsville on April 22,23,24, and 25, 2013. The first two days are
primarily for children in grades 2 thru 4 while the last two are open to the
public. Greg is hoping for participation of TVW and the new Huntsville club
in adjacent booths. Demonstrations or displays of other crafts would be
welcome. Contact Greg for information.
- Celtic Crafts Piping on the Green Fair will be held at
the Celtic Cup in Tullahoma on Saturday April 6, 2013. A 10-foot square
display area is $35. Contact Rene Cavett at (417) 294-0040 if you are
interested.
Old Business
- 2013 dues are due and payable to Bob Addington.
- Tools for Sale on the club web page.
Super Show and Tell for the December meeting:
- Greg Myers- showed a shadowbox for display of medals
and a matching flag case. He made both from tiger stripe maple and applied
his own mixture of water-base analine dye, and finish coats of shellac and
laquer.
- Jim Acord- brought a sample of walnut that he bought
twenty years ago for $2 per log. What he discovered when he sawed into the
wood was lots of hidden checks and cracks. He also brought a nice pair of
mills for salt and pepper that he turned after attending Doyle McConnell’s
Pepper Mill Workship.
- Bob Addington- brought a candle holder, a pair of
round boxes, and a heart and ribbon that he carved with his CNC router. He
described problems with the boxes going out of round when they were cut
apart.
- Bob Reese- brought one of four wooden cars that he
built for family member Christmas gifts using plans published in an old
Woodsmith magazine. He found the plan dimensions inconsistent with each
other and the instructions incomplete. The project required a surprising
amount of work even though he used ready-made spoked wooden wheels ordered
from Rockler.
- Dick Wollam- showed a stylized fox that he carved from
XXX. The carving finish consisted of two coats each of lacquer and
water-based urethane.
- Richard Gulley- showed a very unusual relief carved
translucent Lithophane “portrait” that he made from a scrap of Corian
countertop material. A planer was used first to thin the material to
1/4-inch. He then converted a scanned black and white photo print into a
three dimensional surface contour and toolpath file for his CNC router using
PhotoVCarve software. Thin areas where more material is cut away pass more
light and thus correspond to lighter regions in the photo. A 1/8-inch ball
mill was used for the initial roughing pass, followed by a finish cut using
a 1/16-inch ball mill. Richard also brought an Auburn plaque he made from
hard maple using the CNC machine.
- Ken Gould- brought a wooden copy of an adjustable
trammel used in the 18th century for suspending grease lights or cooking
pots. Like the original, Ken’s copy has ratchet teeth for adjusting height
and rings on each end for hanging. He pointed out that properties of wood
make it a poor substitute for the stronger iron used to form the original
rings. He brought a wrought iron bottle opener that he also made and
described how its end ring was formed. A slit was first cut into the
flattened bar with a chisel, the slit was opened with a round drift punch,
and finally the ring was rounded and hammered smooth on the anvil horn.
Program: Red
Oak Ladder Back Chairs by Tim Hintz
Our guest speaker, Tim Hintz, was introduced by former club
VP, Paul Fulks. Tim studied woodworking at the
Appalachian Center for Craft in the late 1990s after a career on the Gulf
Coast as a deep sea diver. He currently lives in Smithville, TN, where he makes
his living building what he calls “Fresh Chairs”.
Each finished chair is unique, exhibiting
the natural wiggles of the wood around knots and retaining the made-by-hand tool
marks.
Tim’s very informative program consisted of a slide
presentation followed by two live demonstrations. He began by showing examples
of his “fresh chairs”. He discussed the various procedures and tools required
for transforming a green five-foot length of veneer-grade red oak log into a
variety of rough blanks that would eventually become chair posts, rungs, back
splats, and rockers. He explained the techniques he uses for bending, shaping,
and sizing parts before final assembly. He also described in detail the
harvesting of green bark strips from select hickory trees (bitternut preferred)
and explained the multiple tedious steps required to produce a durable and
beautifully woven chair seat.
For the live demonstrations, Tim split and shaped a chair
back splat, starting with a green red oak log wedge and using only a froe, club,
draw knife, and shaving horse. He then showed how to locate, lay out, and cut
one of several narrow splat mortises into a chair back post and described how
the curvature and slope of the splat set would be adjusted at final assembly to
provide sitting comfort.
Pictures and prices for the many style/finish combinations
can be found on Tim’s website at:
www.timhintzfreshchairs.com.