In my humble opinion, May was an excellent month for DAW. We had our annual Round Robin meeting, featuring three separate demonstrators. Glen Boudreaux presented information about Pen Making, Brian Evans, demonstrating a Christmas Bell Project and Kevin Bassett discussing Chain Saw Safety. Saturday’s open shop featured a tool swap and sale. DAW was able to add almost $1200 to our coffers which we need to build up funds to purchase new lathes in the not to distant future. We also had the lathes out and I believe we had several candlesticks made which will go towards our commitment to SWAT.
The June meeting will feature Howard Hale of Woodcraft. Howard will demystify the finishing process. Howard had done this years ago for the club and I wished I had taken better notes. Probably the three most important elements in Turning are: Form, Figure and Finish. Howard will help us with the finish. Also, upcoming on June 10, Kevin Bassett will teach the second class in a series for beginning turners. This class will be on making bowls. The wood will be provided. If you have tools bring them, however the club does have tools to get you started. Tickets for this class are available on the web page. The cost is $25 and we can have up to 7 students.
One item of Club business we need to take care of concerns the revision of the club by-laws. A copy of the proposed By-Laws is available in the newsletter and on the Web page. Please read this document. We will need to have a vote from the club membership to enact the changes made to our By-Laws. If you have any questions, corrections or proposed amendments, please contact me prior to the June 15th club monthly meeting. I am hoping to spend as little time on this chore as possible so we can get to the fun parts of our meeting.
I would encourage you to plan on attending SWAT as this is the second largest symposium of woodturners in the world. Only smaller than the AAW annual symposium. Information about the SWAT symposium is available on their web site: www.swaturners.org. I would also encourage all of our members to join AAW. DAW is an affiliated chapter of the AAW and although membership in AAW is not a requirement to be a member of DAW it is encouraged.
Finally, I want to ask you to step up and at least consider helping DAW become better by your participation in the leadership of the club. Many of your Board members have done extraordinary tenure. Elections will be this Fall and we are in need of some new ideas and fresh leadership. Please don’t take this to mean that we are lacking! It is just that many of our current board are long in the tooth and their continued support and presence cannot be taken for granted. The time commitment is not overbearing, and many hands make the load much lighter. Currently, I see a need for an assistant librarian to learn the library and help Mark. Our Treasurer has been in office for at least 5 terms, we can also use help the technical aspects of our AV system. We could improve with some consistent photography, newsletter stories and input. In short, without member participation in the leadership of the club there is no club. Our mission is to showcase and educate our members about the art and craft of woodturning. Our webmaster has made great improvements to the web site including a member’s gallery. Thus far only a few have taken advantage of this new feature. I urge you to send in some photos and let the world see your gifts of creativity and improvement as a wood turner. We are here to encourage each other and to support each other. I have been encouraged to see the development, creativity and progress demonstrated in the monthly Show & Tell portion of the monthly meeting. I look forward to our June meeting. You make it worthwhile! See you soon!
Kevin Bassett