Forty four members and nine guests signed in for the March General Meeting
President Joe Mannke called the meeting to order and proceeded with the introduction of new members.
The meeting quickly moved to the feature speaker of the evening, Art Stadlin, whose talk was on creating bandsaw boxes.
Art stated he has been making bandsaw boxes for nine years, and showed us his first project. In typical woodworker fashion, Art pointed out the “defects” in his work, since they were so difficult to see. He also detailed some of the accessories available to workers, such as a special stabilizer for bandsaws made by Carter Products. He touched on the need for a tee square to line up cuts and suggested a shop vacuum pickup for sawdust. He says putting the blade’s teeth in the center of the bandsaw wheel is important for the quality of the cut.
Art’s favorite blade is a 3/16” wide blade with 10 teeth per inch, which produces a smoother albeit slower cut and he advised of some other size options.
Art was somewhat proud of gluing up scraps to make a blank for bandsawing. He showed numerous examples of his work, some of which is shown on the woodworking web site, “Lumberjocks” ( http://lumberjocks.com/forums ) under the screen name FloridaArt, and he asked anyone on that forum to be a “Lumberjocks” friend.
Follow this link for Art’s complete presentation slide show:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=16WRspDABcAjC_2lMg4faAQ6WB9PpX2J_
Business
After the break, Joe Mannke asked for a show of hands to determine if sponsoring a charity is a direction in which the club should move. No vote count was given, but Joe indicated a positive result.
Joe announced that the Board decided to give Easter Seals $500.00 to support John Philips.
Joe introduced support for the “Empty Bowls” fund raiser for the Food Bank of Manatee, at this link http://foodbankofmanatee.org/. Their largest fundraiser is in November, often at two separate locations with one being Lakewood Ranch but not set at this time.
As back ground information, Joe said that previously, the “Empty Bowls” type of efforts relied on ceramic bowls which were then displayed with the general public selecting a bowl, making a contribution, and then receiving a sampling of soups from participating local restaurants, with the entire affair taking on an almost carnival atmosphere. The romantic notion of the event is that the participants get their soup in the bowl they select, but in truth the soup is served in sanitary containers, and people can easily carry home their clean bowl as a souvenir.
Those bowls are often made by local disadvantaged or challenged people. The charity reported that they could not source enough ceramic bowls! The charity is non-denominational.
As further background information, the Sarasota Woodturners previously supported these efforts, but this year they will be focusing their support on All Faiths Food Bank which serves only Sarasota County. Joe suggested that we take up the slack for Manatee County. Denny Wetter will be spearheading this effort, and said that we could make wooden bowls that would be offered in a first pick preview event and available for a donation of perhaps $50.00. Denny also had a truck load of locally harvested rosewood already cut into blanks for members to use, and said the donated bowls could be any size or shape and from any wood species. Anyone who missed the meeting and willing to make bowls may contact Denny to see if any bowl blanks are left, and to coordinate when to bring in their bowls.
Show and Tell
Terry Bair showed four small pill boxes he made for his wife, further refining the shape with each design.
George Norton acted as a surrogate for Jim Bassett who made another Sam Maloof chair, this one a low back chair.
Marvin Stolzfus showed a turned podocarpus vase. After turning the vase, he completely cut through the vase in one section using a small jig saw. He depicted the shape of a heron in tall grass and painted the scene with iridescent paint.
Larry Simmons showed us some clamps he found at a garage sale that are used to frame window frames, and he asked the group’s opinion on what species of wood was represented by the sample piece be brought.
John Philips showed some photographs of woodworking in which he was involved.
Bob Eslinger showed a photo of a coffee table in progress and detailed the jig he made to introduce a curve to the table legs.
Ed Columbo wanted illuminated house numbers at the end of his drive, so he made his own out of cherry finished with automotive paint. The numbers were hollowed out and small LEDs were put inside so that when the numbers are fastened to a wall with standoffs, the LEDs light up the outline of the number but yet are not visible themselves.
Denny Wetter showed two bowls, one of which is made from Florida Oak which Denny says he does not like it as he finds that wood ugly.
Thelma Proctor made four scrollsaw boxes from a pine two by three from the lumberyard. She then decorated the box tops.
Fred Damianos featured a lidded bowl. He says, to hold the lid in place for final finishing, he wet both the inside of the bowl at the rim and the lid where it touches the bowl. Then he added duct tape to hold everything together for finishing.
John Peasley made an intarsia piece of a bear in a tree that he titled “Where’s Mama.”
Raffel
Ron Watkins and Marty Cole won the raffle drawing.
Written by:
Andrew DiLorenzo, Secretary