Minutes for August 20, 2013 meeting
of the Tennessee Valley Woodworkers

President Karen Browning called the meeting to order at 7:08 PM.

• Tonight’s program: “Tips and Tricks to Help Us Think Outside the Box” presented by member, Ray Cole
• Members in attendance: (58)
• Guests: (3) Bill and Peggy Gray, Lynchburg and Justin Jolliffe, son of member Jim Jolliffe, Tullahoma
• New Members: (0)

Reminders:

• President Browning reminded all guest to see Bob Addington, sign the guest sheet and pick up a copy of our “Splinters” newsletter.

Club events for 2013:

• Doyle McConnell reported that the July 27 Shop Tours were well attended and enjoyed by all. The group met for breakfast at the Sunrise Café in Winchester.  Everyone was fascinated by Walter Clement’s very interesting “antique” shop in Belvedere and his assortment of 1948 vintage power tools. John and Janie Lovett gave an extremely interesting insider tour of Falls Mill with several demonstrations using the antique spinning and weaving tools.
• Coffee County Fair will be September 16-21. Doyle McConnell encouraged members to participate.
• Fall Seminar is scheduled for Saturday Oct 19, at Tom Cowan’s Artisan Studio, in Cowan, featuring the expertise of Ronnie Young on furniture construction and Scott Tinker on finishing techniques. The $45 registration fee includes pastries, coffee, cold drinks and lunch. Have questions? - - contact Loyd Ackerman.
• Master Woodworkers Show will be held in downtown Knoxville Friday through Sunday, Nov 1-3, 3013. This is billed as the premiere show in the Southeast.
• Annual Christmas Party will be December 13 in Decherd.
• The TVW Exposition has been postponed until March 2 through 9, but it will be here before you know it. Contact Dan Maher to help or sign-up your display items. Stay tuned for details.
• Everyone is encouraged to use the TVW Forum. The more participation, the better the database becomes. Contact Loyd Ackerman if you have trouble with log-on.
• Membership was encouraged to visit Henry Davis and the Club DVD Library.
• The Flute Circle meets at 1:00 pm on the last Tuesday of the month at the Cowan Artisan Studio. Contact Ron Reimers to confirm meeting.

Carvers Events:

• Meetings are held at Phil Bishops shop the 1^st Saturday of each month.
• Polly Crockett Festival will be September 21-23 in Cowan.
• Huntsville Show will be 1^st week in November.
• Tims Ford Demonstration is Oct 12 from 11am to 4pm. Contact Ranger Josh.

Announcements:

• Has anyone heard from Stan McKennon.
• Remember Phil Bishop as he deals with health issues.

Old Business

• Dues for the 2013 year are due and payable. Hand your $10 to Bob Addington. What a deal!
• Tools for Sale on the club web page, or contact Loyd Ackerman.

• See Chuck Taylor if your picture has not been taken for the website.

New Business

• No new business

Show and Tell:

• John Duval – found a large stump floating on Tim’s Ford Lake, towed it to his dock, and discovered that it was walnut. He showed pictures of the salvage operation and lathe work, and he brought two completed bowls finished with wipe-on Waterlox sealer.
• Phil Myers – showed photos of a two-compartment compost bin that he recently constructed using rough-cut locust lumber purchased at a local sawmill.
• Ross Roepke – brought a box he made from highly-figured maple. The ornamented lid was salvaged from a pump organ that a friend gave him. He also brought a small red cedar table  with tapered redwood legs. The items were finished with wipe-on Deft oil.
• Larry Wendland – brought a small bowl and a cherry lidded box. The burl veneer on the lid was sawn during a demonstration at Doyle McConnell’s shop and glued to the substrate using Loyd Ackerman’s vacuum press. Larry announced that he will be taking a sabbatical from his power tools, following two recent accidents involving his table saw.
• Bob Leonard – brought a wood carving knife he made from an aluminum-handled kitchen paring knife. He removed most of the aluminum and replaced it with a larger, easy to hold wood handle.
• Rheta Reese – brought a walking stick shaped like a “ladies leg.” She and Bob made and sold them by the gross to the Indiana State Park Service in the 1950s, along with large numbers of stave buckets and other wood items.
• Bob Reese – brought his latest violin, that’s #39, the one with the compass star inlay on the back. He described the difficulty of applying stain to the violin back without bleed into the lighter-colored wood inlay. Rheta  played a tune from her repertoire and showed off the instrument’s tonal qualities. She remarked that her bow that was bought by her mother for $25 in 1945 is now valued at $1200, and wondered why woodworkers are not making bow.
• Doyle McConnell – brought a pair of spalted maple peppermills that he has been working on and plans to give as gifts.
• Vince Zaccardi – brought a large box elder bowl that dried out-of-round and not concentric with the chuck spigot. He was able to perform the final turning by re-centering the bowl rim and epoxying the canted base to the chuck. Vince also brought a variety of cheese boards, wine bottle stoppers, and a cherry bowl for the UTSI auction.
• Doug Dunlap – was inspired by Harry May’s shop-built tool sharpener/polisher and brought one that he built for himself using available materials. He also brought a chisel he had recently re-handled and demonstrated how his machine could put on a final edge.
• Greg Myers – brought an end-grain cutting board he made using several contrasting woods, a dragon jigsaw puzzle, and a turned candle holder. He suggested adding extra “sacrificial” rows to the cutting board glue-up to compensate for tear-out during final thickness planer passes.
• Jim Everett – brought two large intarsia panels he made featuring Native American dancers and a smaller one showing a winter water pump scene. Jim donated the third piece to the UTSI auction. A variety of contrasting woods and pyrographic designs were used to create the pieces.
• Bob Addington – brought a CNC carved panel with a jaybird and a rope border that he made from yellow pine. After the carving was complete, he applied a mineral spirit wash to see what a natural finish would look like. He then decided to overcoat the wet surface with a light application of cherry stain. As a result, the grain was raised and the surface that had been smooth following the carving operation became rippled all over.
• Mickey Knowles – brought four turned bowls, including a butternut one that Kevin had started. He also brought a interesting trivet and lidded box that he bought during a visit to Estonia. Both pieces were made from segmented end-grain juniper.
• Reilly Earle – brought a small lidded box he made from scrap and a larger bandsawn box with an “Escher style” lid design in two contrasting woods. He also brought a clever 1800s type puzzle box he made and demonstrated how to use a crank and key to turn the gears and open the secret swing-out compartment.
• Bob Addington – brought six large bowls turned from walnut and Bradford pear. They were all finished with six coats of wipe-on polyurethane. Bob described an incident in which a large bowl with bark inclusions exploded in his lathe while he was turning without a face shield. The several pieces that struck him in the face convinced him that he should wear a shield in the future.
• Sharon Wright – brought in several pieces that her late husband Newton  had made, including a segmented vase with a carved rose, a segmented African Djembe drum, a small weed pot with wood flowers she made, and a unique twisted Möbius strip made from pear wood. Newton spent several weeks visualizing and designing the project using a leather belt as his model, and then spent even longer fabricating, assembling, and re-assembling the pieces before he was satisfied.
• Dean Lutes – brought a new Tennessee Valley Woodworkers sign that he designed and fabricated using his CNC router and sign foam board.

Program:      “Tips and Tricks to Help Us Think Outside the Box”
presented by member, Ray Cole

• President Karen Browning introduced the speaker, Ray Cole, a longtime member of TVW Club and a local professional woodworker.
• Roy began what was a very interesting program by describing how he was not a “program putter-oner.” He proved himself wrong, since his presentation was both informative and entertaining. Well done, Roy.
• He credited Tom Cowan and Phil Bishop for their support and expertise.
• Handrails are a large percentage of his work, the more curved and twisted they are, the more he likes it.
• According to Roy, “Most of my work is done with routers - and routers - - - - and - - routers. I have about thirty and won’t be running out any time soon.”
• He showed a pipe wrench that he made all by hand from “boxcrate” wood using primarily a belt sander for shaping.
• He designs his own crown molding and enjoys making complicated curved trim. “When the going gets hard, the going gets good.”
• Early in his fifty plus year career he bought a grinding system and grinds custom knives for his own molding designs of to reproduce a vintage shape for a customer. He uses quarter-inch plastic to make a full-scale template of the pattern, and the machine that’s “like a oversized key cutter” does the rest.
• When building curved cabinet doors, Roy suggests building the curved panels first and building the frames to fit.
• He never uses plans unless he has to, they slow him down.
• Big stave porch columns are also a specialty. He brought a jig that he made to glue-up the staves and described the process of forming the cylinder.
• In all his experience, Roy says it is always a pleasure to work and work and work on a job and have the customer say, “That’s exactly what I wanted.” Roy says, “Don’t worry about the cost, just worry about doing a good job.”
• Ray brought a vintage Stanley #55 Universal Combination Plane (he has the original fifty blades for cutting a variety of shapes) and a vintage Stanley #113 Circular Ship’s (Compass or Radius) Plane with spring steel sole that can be adjusted to plane either concave or convex surfaces.  The KUNZ Company of Germany is now making a quality reproduction of the discontinued Stanley model for $300 ($400 with HSS iron). He also brought a universal Round Tenon Cutter for a hand brace.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 PM.