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Meetings/News/Events Water Gap Woodturners

Lots to catch up on!

Firstly, pardon me for missing July.

I wanted to start by welcoming our newest member, Rick Dorbney.  He joined us at the August meeting, and we quickly converted him to membership for 2011.  If you want to bring a friend along to the meeting like Ed Brannon did, please feel free to do so.  We are running a 2010 membership special- anyone between now and the end of the year that joins (new) can pay for 2011, and we will grandfather them for the rest of 2010!

A quick round of thanks for the following people and reasons:

Dan Moore and Tony Whalen for helping me set up the Sussex County Arts and Heritage Council Show.  If you haven’t stopped by to see it, it is certainly worth a visit to Newton.  If you go, you may find parking on Spring Street (free), but if you have to park in a municipal lot, find the parking machine because they do ticket!

We had a good turnout from membership presenting their work.  From memory, the following people have items in the show:  Dan Moore, Mike Gurodis, Rick Wortman, Tony Whalen, Ed Brannon, Wil Goldschmidt, Jim Matthews, Joe Eid, Bruce Gordon, and Steven Antonucci.  (Sorry if I missed you, but it is from memory…)

Dick Plog handed me a front page article from the NJ Herald that ran a feature story on the SCAHC show.  It mentioned the Water Gap Woodturners throughout the article, so I am expecting that we will all have to start wearing sunglasses and big hats to walk out in public soon.

I would also like to thank Dick Plog for setting up our second club challenge:  the Cherry Challenge.  I would like to continue to do these challenges, perhaps twice per year, so if you have any ideas for one, please bring them to the meetings.  For 2011, I’d like to get some formal plans together around the calendar, rather than being so seat-of-the-pants all of the time.

Dick brought in a bunch of Cherry blanks with the theme ‘Let’s see what people do with this”… pretty wide open, huh?  We agreed that the October meeting would be the Cherry Challenge Show and Tell, so you’ve got about 8 weeks to figure something out.  Let’s aim for 100% participation?

Ed Brannon mentioned a Swap Meet/Tool Sale meeting again, and we agreed that the December meeting would be the time for that.  With the holidays just around the corner, who couldn’t use a little extra cash and room in the shop for some new tools?  The December meeting will be a Holiday Extravaganza-NOT TO BE MISSED!  In addition to the Swap Meet, we will also be running a Secret Santa program and a “party”.  If you would like to Volunteer to be the December meeting coordinator, send me a note!

After the Show and Tell, our guest demonstrator (kudos to Mr. Brannon for arranging!) was Alan Gilburg from the Central New England Woodturners.  Alan brought a very interesting project that he suggested sold very well to the high end culinary types- A salt vault! 
The salt vault is a container for storing fancy salts that require “just a pinch”.  Alan made glue ups  from a variety of hardwoods, but he doesn’t recommend using walnut because of the end grain tearout 😉
The process begins between centers and turning the blank to round.  A small offset point is chosen to get an offset tenon on the now rounded blank, and the tenon is turned to fit a chuck jaw.  The offest is necessary to offset the storage compartment in the vault so that there will be sufficient room to install the pin for the lid.
Alan turns a shallow recess/bowl in the top of the vault to hold the salt.  He recommended that it wasn’t too large, or the salt will be harder to reach and tends to cake with the humidity.  The lid is kept in place by a small magnetic catch, and pivots freely around the pin which he turns from a contrasting hardwood.  Design options are limitless!
With the holidays coming, this project might be a nice stocking stuffer for friends and family.  Alan mentioned that they go together pretty quickly, don’t require a lot of specialized tools or machining, and that everyone loves them. We really appreciate Alan coming out to Peters Valley to join us and want to thank him for demonstrating his very useful project!
Our next meeting will be in Early September.  We do not have a topic yet, so if you know of a guest turner in the area, feel free to reach out to me to get them on the schedule like Ed did. 
Until then, safe spinning…

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