With the Thanksgiving holidays “in the way” it is only a little more than a week until our December 3rd meeting of the Fine Woodworkers of Austin, 7-9 pm on Thursday evening, in the Woodcraft classroom.

Terry Hall has coordinated a program on “legs,” of the type used in building furniture for the December meeting. It will include a demo/presentation by Peter Clark on the classical Ball and Claw type foot; Frank Linn will discuss finishing legs, and Bob Dennison will cover tapered legs.

On Friday-Saturday January 8-9, 2010 Lie-Nielsen will be conducting a free Hand Tool Training Event in Austin - this year it will be at Fine Lumber and Plywood, but similar to the one they did last year on the ACC campus. Curtis Turner is trying to see if they would conduct a special program for the woodworking clubs. The logical time for the special event is Thursday evening January 7, the day of our January meeting. They would likely want to do the presentation where they are set up. Therefore, if there is interest, and also if the details can be arranged, we might move the January meeting to Fine Lumber where they are set up for the Lie-Nielsen program. What do you think?

Frank Strazza of the Homestead Heritage Woodworking school in Elm Mott (Waco) has (through Mark Giles) expressed willingness to do a program for our club on the woodworking involved in making a violin. Frank is such a great woodworker and popular teacher that I won’t ask if we should… I am trying to get it arranged for our February or March meeting.

This is the list of potential topics for future meetings… please add to the list, and perhaps offer to do all or part of the program on one of these topics. If you don’t like some of the topics, let me know, and perhaps we will remove it.

• Turning spindles - lathe demo - if you don’t have a lathe, you world is square!
  Sharpening tools other than flat plane irons and chisels, such as turning and carving gouges, including discussion of grinders
• Veneering - at least simple stuff
• Finishing, including water based finishes, and rubbing out a film finish (satin, semi-gloss, gloss, grand piano)
• Staining and dying
• Tuning a bandsaw for curves and resawing
• Turning bowls - another lathe demo. Bowls are fun since many projects can be completed in less than an hour!
• Choosing a sander or sanders (the power kind)

Types of planes, and tuning a hand plane was on the list, but if we have the Lie-Nielsen program, I expect this topic will be covered for this year.