The regular monthly meeting of the Fine Woodworkers of Austin will be held Thursday night, September 3, from 7 to 9 pm in the Woodcraft classroom. Come early and enjoy the 10% discount on most items that Woodcraft offers members on the day of the meeting.

If you haven’t paid your dues for 2009-2010 you have time to get your check for $30 (Payable to Fine Woodworkers of Austin) to our treasurer, Bill Tims.

Bill McCaffrey will do a presentation on Intarsia (making a wood picture) and inlay (decorating with wood), including techniques, tricks, substrates, etc. We won’t mention that these are techniques you could use if you wanted to build a lingerie chest or other pieces of fine furniture.

Peter Clark will follow Bill with a brief lesson on how he makes squares and strips to inlay, using the techniques Peter has mastered for gluing scraps of wood together to make something quite valuable!

John Parkinson will give a talk about his woodworking apprenticeship in England - should be interesting

One of our new members, Bob Brown, iis a salesman for MesquiteBurl.com - a relatively new mesquite lumber yard in Georgetown. He will be bringing some sample wood from his firm, that he will award as a door prize or prizes for the members who attend this meeting. If you were thinking of joining, now would be a very good time. The way we usually handle things like this is for the Treasurer to pass out tickets with serial numbers to the members in good standing - you keep half, and the other half goes in a hat for a drawing at the end of the meeting. You must be present to win - if you leave early, we draw again, until we have a winner (or perhaps multiple winners) among those present at the end. Of course everyone should also run out to this lumber yard at 2217 David Ferretti Drive and give them a lot of business, so they keep bringing door prizes to future meetings.

Be sure to bring your show and tell items. Among other show and tell, Bob Brown has promised to bring some Mesquite items he has been working on.

For the future…

It has been suggested that we do more with hand tools, and Mark Wells has suggested a number of topics. I think we can cover two or three shorter topics each meeting, including some focused on hand tools.

The tentative plan for the October 1 meeting (not yet firm) is a cordless screwdriver comparison - Bring your favorite unit(s), both those that use batteries and those that use people power. For the other half of the meeting, lets talk about legs and aprons - the basics for a table (or for the base of other types of furniture.)

Preliminary idea for November 5 is a sharpening program - perhaps a face off between the sandpaper techniques some advocate, and the waterstone techniques others favor, as used with plane irons and chisels. This might help you build a wish list for Christmas presents! And Curtis Turner’s daughter Kathrine was born August 12, so he may have gotten enough sleep by November to be allowed to handle sharp instruments, and may be able to help with this program.

For the December 3 meeting, Peter Clark has offered to do a talk on carving feet (he may be a surgeon, but he swears he isn’t a wood carver, so these may be techniques we all can use). Perhaps ball and claw feet, or other wild animal feet that Peter suggested. And perhaps some plane topics (sorry, that hand-plane pun was intentional)

We still would like to do some veneering - maybe the January meeting?

Comments on these program, and suggestions are welcome (PLEASE).