The regular monthly meeting of Fine Woodworkers of Austin will be Thursday evening February 4th at Woodcraft, from 7 to 9 pm. Come early and spend heartily - remember Woodcraft offers members a 10% discount on most items on the day of the meeting.

Bill McCaffrey has built some jigs that allow him to build a chair in a few hours. He will cut another chair, and bring his jigs so he can show us how he built the jigs and how he uses them to build chairs. I gotta see how he builds a chair that fast!

I suggest that folks who yielded to temptation last month, and have received their packages from Lie-Nielsen (or from other places, inspired by Lie-Nielsen), bring their goodies for show and tell.

Bring your show and tell projects also - those you would like to show off, or those where would like help and advice from club members

For the future, I am still trying to get Frank Strazza of the Homestead Heritage Woodworking school in Elm Mott (Waco) to do a program for our club. He suggested interest in talking about the woodworking involved in making a violin. Although few if any of us are likely to become luthiers, Frank is such a great woodworker and popular teacher that I am confident he will provide an interesting program for everyone.

David Petersen is one of the founding members of the club, and a full-time professional furniture maker. He makes extensive use of veneers in his projects, and has offered to conduct a program. Warning - this program could get you hooked on veneering, so after the program you will probably want to take the more extensive class David occasionally offers through Woodcraft, then you will want to buy you own equipment, etc. That is how I got hooked!

There have been several requests for a program on turning - which might be an overview or it could involve as many as three programs

1. Turning spindles (long pieces between the head and tail of the lathe) and including turning pens
2. Turning bowls (open pieces attached to the head of the lathe) - these projects are especially fun since they can often be completed in an hour.
3. Turning hollow vessels (special techniques used to hollow a vessel through a small opening)

Here are some more potential topics for future meetings… please add to the list, or if you don’t like some of the topics, let me know, and perhaps we will remove it.

• Sharpening tools other than flat plane irons and chisels, such as turning and carving gouges, including discussion of grinders
• Finishing, including water based finishes, and rubbing out a film finish (satin, semi-gloss, gloss, grand piano), french polishing
• Staining and dying - how to match wood colors
• Tuning a bandsaw for cutting curves and resawing
• Choosing a sander or sanders (the power kind), exploring functions, not necessarily brands
• Types of planes, and building your collection of planes - I assume tuning a hand plane was covered enough in the Lie-Nielsen program last month
  Shop-made tools and jigs (Rob Harris offered to coordinate this if other members would contribute)
• Advice on how to choose and restore old hand tools (This sounds Like Rob or again, or Mark Wells, or other members might contribute)

I would appreciate your comments, preferences, and suggestions for the upcoming meetings.