Meeting 6/15/21
Meeting called to order by President Carl Blumenthal at 6:30 PM.
Carl welcomed all those online and to those present in UTSI’s H-111 Conference Room to our June combined in-person and online Zoom Meeting. Many members were happy to be able to meet in person again. The meeting broadcast was hosted at UTSI’s H-111 conference room due to its improved video and audio capability. We appreciate UTSI’s generosity allowing the club to use H-111 and their broadcasting capability.
Visiting
Carl introduced one guest Trey Martin who was visiting from Florida.
Business
Officers and Committee Reports: Vice President & Program Chair Gary Runyon noted next month’s program is still in work and that he had a couple of programs that needed to be downselected to one. Gary requested members email him any future program ideas to his home email: [email protected]. He noted that programs don’t necessarily need to be from local folks due to the ability of Zoom to connect us with anyone around the world!
The 2021 Calendar is correct with monthly general meeting dates and first and third Saturday Carving meetings as well as the UTSI & Zoom annotation for the monthly meetings. The special events column included “placeholders” for the special events. The special event leads will need to discuss the timing (if at all) of holding special events and update the calendar accordingly. August projects that our program will be the Club Auction. Karen Browning will work to set a date/time for the Annual Picnic in September.
Treasurer Paul Jalbert provided a listing of last year’s expenditures: 1) $500 to Rob Cosman’s Warrior Project, 2) $300 to Franklin County’s Free Library Construction Materials, 3) $100 to Good Samaritan in memory of Sharon Wright and Bob Leonard, 4) $160 for an annual Zoom license, 5) $250 to the Museum of Power and Industry (aka Falls Mill) and 6) $50 in memory of Ed Naylor.
Once the general meeting announcements concluded we moved to the Program section of the meeting which was our Super Show & Tell of projects we made during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Super Show and Tell:
John Hartin showed some beautiful magnolia bowls he recently turned. He noted magnolia is very hard, like red oak but tight-grained like cherry and walnut. One of the bowls had a textured rim. The bowls were finished with a cabinet grade lacquer then buffed out
Chris Sauder noted Mickey Knowles told him he needed to get a lathe. So he did. He showed some beautiful bowls made of Hackberry, Spalted Hackberry, Birch and Leland Cypress. All were finished with sanding sealer. He also showed a finished ukelele he made for one of the grandkids from a kit. He inserts a penny in the headstock from the year of construction. He wood burns his initials on the back of the headstock. The Ukelele was finished with a water-based stain hand hand-rubbed wax.
Karen Browning showed a Red Bud Vase with natural edges and features. She finished it in 3 coats of water-based poly. She also showed a turned tea-light candlestick of unknown, unfinished wood.
Gary Runyon showed a sample of the 20 turned and threaded needle boxes he made from hickory, pecan, bloodwood, mesquite, and bocote rosewood. He finished them with micro-crystalline shellac lacquer. He showed interesting threaded Acorn Shaped Boxes with dogwood bases and textured cherry tops finished with Doctor’s Woodshop Walnut Oil and Microcrystal Paste Wax. He also showed an example of the 9 storage boxes he made from a variety of cherry, oak and walnut and finished with MinWax Antique Oil. Gary also showed a Tansu Style Box he made with Ambrosia Maple using a woodworking plan. Gary has made several of these interesting storage boxes. He finished the Tansu style box with MinWax Antique Oil.
Darrel Albert showed three pieces made from Chittum Burl and finished in walnut oil. The two “ladle” type pieces were made from a tree that had 42 burls on it! The burl dish came from a chittum stump.
Geoff Roehm showed a handy router jig for cutting accurate scarf joints for guitar necks.
Pete Miller sent pictures of watercolor painting tracings he did June 6th. One will stay black and white and Pete will add will add flesh tones, fingernail color and do the robe on the other. He used a design that he traced on the paper for the painting. He is not free-handing this stuff yet like real artists do. He has two on-line courses to do to learn how to good watercolor paintings. Pete wanted to do painting as one of the club members at the spoon carving workshop said it would enhance his wood burnings. COVID and a Christmas gift gave him the chance to try painting on paper and wood.
Loyd Ackerman showed a great variety of the work he produced over the pandemic period. He showed a variety of wood turnings he made during 2020-2021. He showed a walnut serving tray he mad in Nov 20. In Oct 20, Loyd made a bean bag toss (aka corn hole) game for his son who is an avid Alabama fan. He made a sofa table out of cherry for his daughter in Aug 20. He made a walnut and poplar side table. He noted the poplar choice was because he ran out of walnut. He glazed/finished/repeated the poplar to match the walnut and felt over many iterations the wood colors matched well. He showed a custom child study desk built in Dec 200 to his 9 year old granddaughter’s specification to support her remote learning. The desk is made of maple with a lacquer finish.
Darren Earle showed some lumber he’s been milling since retiring from his previous profession and buying a portable saw mill. He showed some large slabs of ash he milled and then cut into bowl blanks. The ash tree was over 250 years old and the “limb” was 29” in diameter! The limb had fallen off but the tree was still standing and the State Arborist came out to document the tree (after some coaxing…). Darren showed some raised garden bed boxes he made for his wife. The bottoms were made from black locust and the sides from red cedar. He told of a lady who had a log cabin and tobacco barn on her property who wanted a mantle for the cabin’s fireplace. She asked for walnut but Darren suggested that she use some of the American Chestnut logs loose on the porch as it would match the cabin. She agreed. He took a log home and milled it and noticed it was not American Chestnut, but Poplar! The difference in this poplar log was that it had over 130 growth rings in the slab! He did some research and noted poplar used to grow very slowly. One can’t find that type of poplar anymore. His final pictures were of a maple burl in raw form and the burl on the lathe. He noted that the ”bumps” in the burl were made from mistletoe “haustorium” that grows between the maple cells to attach itself and nourish itself by siphoning off some of the maple tree’s water. The mistletoe does not hurt the tree. It does provide very interesting effects on the maple burl.
Jim Jolliffe showed a finished cottonwood bark carving of a native American in a wolf headdress that he had sprayed with three coats of rattle can lacquer then added acrylic highlights. Once highlighted, he sprayed with matte lacquer and applied Watco’s Liquid Wax (natural color) and buffed it out.
Meeting adjourned at 8 PM. Our next meeting is on Tuesday, July 20th at UTSI’s H-111 Conference Room (our standard meeting location). We hope to see you all there or on Zoom! The July Program is to be down selected from a couple of options and will be announced prior to the meeting.