Mickey Hudspet, known primarily for his chip carved boxes, wowed the members with his turned and then chip carved Christmas ornaments.  He began by explaining that he wanted to use a mandrel to make the whole process easier.  He couldn't find anything close to what he needed so he made the whole mandrel from one piece of steel beginning with the #1 morse taper on his metal lathe.  He mounted a piece of basswood on the mandrel and turned it round to match the circumference of the geometric pattern he had made on his laser printer.  He tapered the top and bottom leaving a cylinder in the center.  He mounted the pattern print side down and transferred the print to the wood by rubbing the back of the paper with a lacquer thinner impregnated cloth.  He then proceeded to make a magnificent chip carved ornament body using the pattern that was left on the wood after the pattern transfer.  He applied finials to each end and declared it done save for the lacquer finish.

Ted explained the process he uses to make laminated letter openers and related gift items that he sells at craft shows.  He stresses shop safety while "having fun in the shop".  He wowed the audience with his demonstration of how he cuts a short piece of 3/8" dowel with a chop saw and then rotates it and cuts it again. He continued with how he forms the laminated curves of the wooden letter openers that he markets.

In this class Bob Black explained how to adjust your jointer to achieve the results you have been "trying" to achieve.  Several of the tools from the metal working industry have found their way into the woodworking shop.  Bob shared his experience from both industries to show how to line up the knives of a jointer and then line up the tables to achieve the cuts you bought the machine for.

At today's class, Ron and Paul explained how to convert your favorite piece of propeller wood or banana wood to usable boards with noting more than a table saw and a thickness planer.They explained several ways of attaching the plank of interest to a shop made sled or a "long" builders level and running the piece against the fence through your table saw.  Once you have that first straight edge, it's easy to straighten the opposite edge on the table saw.  To flatten the remaining 2 sides, Paul demonstrated how to capture the piece on another shop made sled and place hardwood shims under all of the high points so the culprit doesn't flex under the pressure of the feed rollers of the thickness planer.  After several passes through the thickness planer, the one side should be flat enough to turn over and repeat the process.  Lastly Paul revealed one of his magic bullets.

http://woodworker.com/table-saw-sanding-disc-10-mssu-95-430.asp?search=Sanding%20Disc%20Table%20Saw&searchmode=2

When ripping a board to width, leave an extra 1/16th, swap out your rip blade with the above sanding disc, and dial in 3 degrees of right tilt on the blade.  (even if you saw is a left tilt, you should be able to adjust the stop enough to achieve 3 degree right tilt.) Running both edges of the board through this 3 degree beveled disc will remove burn marks and saw marks from your soon to be heirloom piece of furniture.

Paul is a master carpenter that just completed his assignment (12 years!) at a rather large megamansion in North Atlanta.  He demonstrated some of the techniques he uses for cutting and fitting applied moldings that are frequently needed on houses and furniture.  He began with fitting moldings of dissimilar width into an acute angled corner.  He did the entire fitting with nothing more than a scribing pencil and a chop saw.  He then cut the angles perfectly without changing the cut angle of the chop saw.  This caused the brains of the several engineers in the audience to "short out".  He then went on to explain several fine points of fitting molding for wainscot and coffered ceilings.  He finished with a picture display and discussion of a variety of "challenges" from the megamansion.

The 2 x 4 contest is one of the major contests of Gwinnett Woodworkers.  The objective s to show others your imaginative use of a construction grade 2 x 4 stud.  At this years contest we had 5 entries that competed for  gift certificates from Peachtree Woodworking.  At the conclusion of the voting, there were only 3 votes separating the top 3 contenders.

Bob Brokaw began with a Power Point presentation covering many of the popular shop built vacuum press devices.  Vacuum pump devices are frequently used with vacuum bags to apply up to 1800 pounds per square foot of pressure to a piece inside of a vacuum bag.  This is commonly used when gluing up an irregularly shaped piece, gluing veneer to a substrate, or flattening a wavy piece of veneer.  The most common vacuum generators for a home shop are an electric vacuum pump or a venturi attached to a compressor.  Bob covered how to add pneumatic and electric controls to make either vacuum source cycle as needed in lieu of continuously running.  He ended by showing pictures of a number of different shop built pumps and demo'ed his own vacuum system that he uses for veneering.  Much of the material was derived from joewoodworker.com and veneersuppliies.com websites

In this meeting, the members brought 2 of their favorite shop mmade jigs and/or fixtures.  Devices were presented one at a time by their owners.  Questions and answers made for a lively discussion.  At the end, several shop made jigs provided by George and Rob were raffled off.

In this class Dan Douthart resumes turning the bowl he roughed out in the previous class.  He began with a bowl that had been roughed out of green wood and had been shop drying until stable.  He explained that the piece had lost considerable weight as the moisture had evaporated slowly.  No major cracks had developed but the piece had warped some and the parts that were previously round were decidedly egg shaped.  He began with showing how to re chuck the bowl in its current form to true up the tenon on the bottom.  Once he could re-grip the tenon and turn the piece round again,  he used a number of tools ground to "ride the bevel" down into the bowl for final finishing.  The last machining operation involved mounting the piece in a bowl chuck to turn off the tenon and complete sanding and finishing.  He ended by explaining how he applies finish and buffs the piece inside and out.

Dan did his best impersonation of Emeril Lagasse with a high energy presentation on rough turning green wood.  Dan completed part 1 (of a 2 part) class on bowl turning.  He came prepared with small green logs that had been prepped into various phases of rough turning a bowl.  He began with how to recognize a suitable log to turn into a bowl.  He then sliced off the ends to get to fresh material, split it end-to-end, and cut a flat spot to facilitate chucking.  He continued with the various operations until he completed a rough turned bowl suitable for storing away to slowly dry before finish turning.  Part 2 (next week) will presume that the rough turned piece has been shop drying for several months and will be finish turned.

This Saturday, The GWA Annual Picnic was held at Peachtree Woodworking.  The staff at Peachtree cleared out the center of the store and set up picnic tables and chairs to accommodate the 65 attendees for the festivities.  The classroom was transformed into a gallery for completed projects brought by the members.  Ricky Alexander and his family catered the buffet featuring pork and chicken barbecue.  The members, their guests, and the store staff enjoyed the food and fellowship.

The father and son team of Jerry and Robert Johnson taught a multi media presentation on basic woodcarving. Robert began with a power point presentation on the names, types, and uses for the various tools used in wood carving.  Jerry followed up by covering the variety of safety devices a carver needs to use to perform carving.  He went on to demonstrate the most basic tools and the safe way to use them.  During the class, both of them used examples of carved pieces to punctuate  the topic being discussed. 

Dan Douthart demonstrated a way to turn small ornaments without hollowing the center of the globe.  He begins with several cubes of wood, drilled, and skewered onto a pen turning mandrel with shop made spacers in between the globes.  This allows for turning several globes at once.  For interest, he  through drilled (with a large forstner bit) some of the pieces perpendicular to the turning axis.  This lightened the body significantly and  created a different look.  He went on to turn finials by a different approach as well.  Contrary to the way of most finial turners, Dan chooses to turn the base of the finial first while both ends are supported.  After turning the tip, he parts off the finial.  His reasoning... it's faster and more likely to be successful.

Gerry started off the class with a power point presentation on the various types of glues that a woodworker would generally use.  He gave a detailed explanation of the charactistics of each type of glue as only an engineer with advanced degrees could.  For the second half of the class, he showed a number of clamps in order of cost for the typical applications that a woodworker would likely encounter.  He began with the pipe clamp and ended with the newer model Bessey K body clamp.

This annual picnic brought together all of the woodworking clubs from the metro Atlanta area.  Fellowship and food were the main events of the day.  Woodworkers from the various clubs mingled through the displays set up under the shade trees outside Don Russell's shop.  While swapping stories on the tail gates of pickup trucks, participants were feasting on Barbeque and roasted corn on the cob. As the afternoon heat set in, the crowd cooled off with home made ice cream made by Don's family.  When not feeding their faces, those in attendance were taking advantage of the numerous tailgate sales that were there.  It seemed that everyone went away with a new treasure.  Wood in various forms seemed to be the popular staple.

At this meeting, we toured 8 shops without leaving the comfort of the classroom!   GWA members submitted pictures of their home shops prior to the meeting.  They were then organized into a common format.  During the virtual tour class meeting, each shop owner would stand and narrate the pictures as they were displayed on the wall with a presentation projector. A lot of great shop tips were covered and a lot of discoveries made during the presentation.  The audience got to see a lot of ideas for dust collection and piping, storage, and shop made accessories.  This new (for GWA) format for shop tours seemed to be a hit worthy of repeating in the future.

Bob started out the class by explaining the need for a set of lathe accessory shelves at Rob's mullti-lathe shop.  The concept for the shelf originated from a similar shelf seen at Mike Peace's shop earlier in the year.  Bob went on to explain the design considerations for the pair of shelves.  Then he went on to explain how the rabbets were machined into the components using a router table and dadoes machined with a handheld router and a pair of edge clamps.  The first of the pair of shelves were already complete and show as the model.  Rob and Bob then teamed up to assemble the remaining shelf using glue, screws, and nail guns.

Wayne entertained the audience with his explanation of whirligigs (art in motion). The majority of whirlygigs are simple machines that use a propeller to derive their power form the wind to turn a shaft equipped with various cams to cause a piece of the artword over the shaft to move.

Wayne brought 5 whirligigs to show the audience the evolution of his art/engineering.  He also started out with propellers but has progressed to small motors that can drive a shaft equipped with multiple cams and attachments enabling more elaborate artistic scenes.  His most recent piece titled "The Bovine String Quartet" integrates 4 characters playing stringed insruments to music around a camp fire.  He "carves" the characters using a dremel tool and then applies acrylic paint.  The most amazing part was that Wayne hasn't had any traininng as either an artist or an engineer.

Ron Brown and his neighbor Chris Woodall treated the audience by demonstrating really fast ways to create hollow lidded acorns.  After rounding the blanks, Ron used a forstner bit to hollow out the inside of the acorn cap.  He then switched to the bottom and repeated the process using a core box router bit to create the hollowed base.  He then went on to shape the outside, fit the top and bottom, and then used a knurling tool to create a texture on the cap.  Chris then showed how to use thread chasing tools to create an acorn with a screw-on top.  Based on the group interest in threading wood, Ron and Chris agreed to pursue development of a future fee  based class dedicated to teaching wood threading.  After details are worked out, the newsletter and web site will contain information about the class.

Leon demonstrated turning small end grain bowls with decorative enhancements. These bowls do not have a flat bottom so they lean over and rock when touched. Leon showed how to burn the rim with a torch and tecture the inside of the bowls. He then covered the inside with metal leaf. This produced a nice looking little bowl.

Ken entertained the audience starting with an "Antiques Roadshow" style interactive discussion about the table full of old tool specimens brought in by the audience.  He continued with a presentation of the large variety of planes, drills, and saws that he brought for discussion. For each tool, he said a few words about the history and the evolution of the tool.  There were so many tools and not a power cord in sight.  The craftsmanship of the english tools made them look like pieces of furniture.  His favorite tools were modern versions of some of the old masters, a Veritas low angle bevel up block plane, and a high tech dovetail saw where the first 3" of teeth had no set for starting the cut in endgrain (all of his router based dovetail jigs are back in the box after giving up on the adjustments.)

Gerry Jones gave a multi-media presentaion of what he has learned about wooden outdoor furniture.  He began with selection of woods and why each would be used for an application.  He emphasized how to design the articles to keep weather out of the end grain of the wood.  Gerry then went on to explain a number of effective means of jointery and fastening the articles.  Lastly Gerry took us on a virtual tour of the various structures he built in his back yard along with detailed in progress pictures of how the bridge and pergola were built.  The tour really emphasized how to use design to integrate function into the form.

Mike began the class by talking about typical spindles like balusters, furniture legs, and knobs. He continued by covering the typical lathe equipment and tools that might be used in spindle turning. He then covered how to prepare a piece of wood including layout work to achieve the desired result. Mike demonstrated typical spindle features like pommels, beads, and coves. During the demo, he covered safety and the variety of measurement tools that a turner might want to have on hand. He concluded with demonstrating the various cutting tools a turner might use during spindle turning.

Gwinnett Woodworkers participated in "The Wood Working Show" at the North Atlanta Trade Center March 9-11 2012.  This show is the premier annual woodworking show for Georgia.  Alongside a host of tool vendors and other woodworking clubs, GWA scrollers were making scroll saw picture puzzles of show attendees and the turners were making spinning tops to give away to the children.  Hans Meier was doing what Hans does best.... drawing a crowd to watch him make 3D puzzles.  In addition, we were demonstrating the Carter Products "Hollow Roller" on a lathe.  With all of the activities going on at once, we frequently had crowds that were quite thick.  When the crowds were less thick, we were able to engage the show attendees to answer questions about a variety of woodworking topics and interest them in club activities.

David began by showing several full size paper patterns of the solid body electric guitars he has designed. After the shape of the outer body is decided, the electronics has to be chosen and recesses have to be located for the pickups, controls, and jacks.  Next the wood is selected based on the desires of the end user for the tonal quality, weight, and finish.  All of the paper patterns eventually become wooden templates that are then used with routers equipped with pattern bits to shape the body and create the reliefs for all of the imbedded electronics.  He finished up by showing 2 of his finished electric guitars that were simply stunning.  Thanks to David for sharing his passion with us.

Suzie Tindall treated the audience to a multimedia presentation of how she sets out to apply finish to a project.  She explained that the process starts with the design and is factored in with the desired result.  Suzie emphasized that 1/3 of a project's time allocation should be dedicated to finishing.  She showed a number of the different products and techniques that she uses to achieve the stunning pieces that she showed at the end of her presentation.  Of particular interest, was a power point shop tour that emphasized the shop made paint booths that she had constructed.

Today we were treated to a shop tour of Pierce and Pierce Architectural moldings by Scott Parr (managing partner) and some of his staff.  Pierce and Pierce makes hundreds of styles of stock moldings out of primarily 5 species of hardwoods.  The tour started with the area where incoming lumber is sorted and sawn to sizes for their stock moldings.  At this point, Scott disclosed to the audience that some of the wood has too much figure to be used for molding and is set aside until another use is found for it.  Many of the audience volunteered to help with his challenge.  It waits at this stage for orders to cut a molding profile into the stock in inventory.  The next stop on the tour was the tool room where molding knives are cut and maintained.  The machine floor was the next stop where there were many highly automated machines that would cut highly complex moldings in a single pass.  Of particular interest, was a CNC molding machine that cut all 4 sides of a complex 12" red oak crown molding in a single pass through the machine.  The tour finished up with a lengthy discussion of the operation of the custom shop where more traditional woodworking shop equipment is used to make custom doors, cabinets, and even furniture.  For one customer they even made some custom caskets. The conclusion of the tour was a visit to the custom shop's hardwood scrap pile where Scott turned the group loose to take what they wanted.  In a very few minutes, all that remained was saw dust.

Kim Muthersbough demonstrated how to make an heirloom pepper mill from a 12" long cherry blank.       He took the time to keep the novice wood turners involved in the basics.  Kim’s presentation walked the group through the Nick Cook style pepper mill production process. Along the way, he provided pointers on basic turning techniques, guidelines for safe turning, and some tips to make that finished mill a true treasure.

Jim Dion treated this week's class to a mulit-media display of many of the items he has made and the jigs and fixtures that he made to enable them.  Among the items he showed on slides was a rather large dining room table and chairs. The mortise and tenon joints for the set numbered north of a hundred.  He showed several methods that he used to accomplish the tenons.  He recently took interest in making guitars.  He showed many of the jigs he made for what turns out to be a very jig intensive project.  He also shared with us pictures of his basement shop.  If there was a cubic foot of space left that didn't have at least 3 uses, it wasn't apparent.

Rob Austin treated the audience to a cooking show style demonstration of how to make band saw boxes.  He covered all of the steps beginning with pattern selection, wood selection and preparation.  He went on to demonstrate how to execute the various cuts on a band saw and the subsequent sanding.  He finished up with how to apply flocking to the finished drawer.

In this class, Jack Morse showed how to turn a full size basebell cap out of a piece of Ambrosia Maple.  The key is to make it thin and keep it wet to avoid splitting. He showed that not all woods are suitable for the subsequent "bending of the bill" with an example of a cap made from Bradford Pear.

In this class the GWA members and several guests gathered at Louis Alexander's mini farm in downtown Lilburn on a chilly 26 degree morning. Rick Clark (owner of Wood Genesis from McDonough) brought his trailer mounted Wood Mizer portable saw mill and set it up amongst an assortment of logs that were to be cut into lumber. Louis had already arranged a large number of logs that had been brought there by a number of tree cutters that had cleaned up after recent storms. Rick gave a short talk about the machine. He explained that this model was fully computer controlled and required very little manual handling once the log was on the loader forks. The $37,000 machine has a 51 hp Caterpillar diesel engine and , under the control of an onboard computer, will slice logs into lumber in thicknesses as small as 1/16”. As the morning progressed, Rick and various helpers made lumber out of several logs and stacked it for air drying (which was explained as requiring 1 year per inch of lumber thickness.)

On January 8, Hans Meier presented how he markets his scroll saw products at local arts and crafts shows.  He shared a lot of tips and techniques he has learned and developed over the 5+ years he has been selling his products at shows.  His high energy style, showmanship, and organization made for an entertaining and very informative class.