The next meeting will be held at Woodcraft, as usual, from 7 to 9 pm on Thursday October 1. Come early to enjoy the 10% discount offered to members on most items on the day of the meeting.

John Parkinson will present a slide show about his apprenticeship program in England. It was originally scheduled for last month, but we ran out of time, so rather than rush it, it was moved to this month.

New member Mark Wells, who has taken the lead on hand tools, will lead a discussion, demo, and comparison of screwdrivers. The original intent was people-powered tools, but it has been broadened to include a comparison with all “cordless” screwdrivers, including battery powered impact drivers. If you have a favorite, bring it to compare with the others.

Bill McCaffrey, who did an in-depth discussion of marquetry and inlay last month, promised a brief demo on “doing it today” (rather than the historical techniques) - specifically something simple like inlay.

Be sure to bring your show and tell.

For the future, we are planning sessions like those below - all subject to change and looking for your comments and suggestions. One suggestion, that we are trying to incorporate, is at least some hand-tool topic each meeting, in addition to the “general woodworking with power tools” topics.

• November 5 - sharpening - grinding and honing - focusing on both sandpaper based and waterstone sharpening, especially for chisels and planes
• December 3 - Peter Clark will demonstrate carving a traditional furniture foot (ball and claw or some similar wild animal), Peter may be a surgeon, but he swears he isn’t a wood carver, so these should be techniques we all can use.
• In the sequence of “all the steps to design and build a piece of furniture” (such as a lingerie chest) we haven’t given any attention to legs and feet, so that may be a program to go with Peter’s tutorial in December. We will be looking for people to do parts of this program, like Terry broke up the carcase program into smaller parts.

Other topics for the future

• 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!
• Types of planes, and tuning a hand plane
• Choosing a sander or sanders (the power kind)

Don’t forget to pay your dues for 2009-2010.

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).

The next meeting of the Fine Woodworkers of Austin will be held this Thursday evening August 6 in the Woodcraft classroom from 7-9 pm.

We haven’t discussed drawers in a long time, so the program this month is DRAWERS…

• build or buy
• metal drawer slides of various types
• wooden drawer slides
• drawer fronts - overlay, shaker, flush, inset
• drawer box construction - front, back, bottom

As we have discussed the program with some of the officers and members, I put together a web page that could be an outline for the program… it is only a draft so far, but you can see it at www.solowoodworker.com/drawers.html. You have to link directly to the draft page if you are interested … there aren’t other pages that link to it yet.

If you would like to volunteer to take a portion of the program (like one of the topics listed above) I would appreciate your help.

Since the Lingerie chest is a dirty word to some of the members, I won’t mention that drawers could be the next issue that we have to face in the design of the lingerie chest.

Bring your show and tell, especially anything related to drawers and drawer slides (or other topics)

Come early with your shopping list for Woodcraft… to get the 10% discount that they offer members on the day of the meeting.

If you haven’t paid your dues for the year, Bill Tims will collect your check for $30 payable to “Fine Woodworkers of Austin.” He appreciates checks rather than cash so he can enjoy the meeting and do the bookkeeping after he gets home.

The tentative topic for the September meeting is Marquetry and inlay
Even more tentative for October is tables… specifically, legs and aprons
November … simple veneering
or whatever you would like to suggest

Charlie Plesums, President
Fine Woodworkers of Austin

Come join us on June 4th as we continue work on the lingerie chest.  This month we will be covering different aspects of carcase construction, focusing on various current techniques such as sliding dovetails, mortise and tenon, floating tenon (domino), stopped dado, and dowel joints.  Additionall discussion may involve overall carcase construction, the materials used (plywood vs. solid wood), the use of floating panels and how these choices affect construction techniques such as drawer mounts.

Update 2: Site is updated, please let me know if anyone has any issues accessing the site or logging in.

Update: The admin server for our site is not responding, I will have to push oof the site updates to tomorrow night.

The website will be down tomorrow night around 9pm for upgrades.  Everything should be back within an hour or two.

Last month we saw how two pieces of furniture were designed, created and delivered to the cabinet room.

This month we will learn how two different style cabinets are made.  In this case European and Face Frame cabinets.

Charlie will share his knowledge on the the different style of cabinets and present the different types of hinges that can be used.

See you Thursday evening at 7.

Members,
In our last meeting we discussed Paul Sellers’ and Frank Strazza’s (et. al). ultimate commission for two sideboards that now in the permanent collection at the White House.  Yes, the White House.  Frank and his apprentice Jonathon plan to visit us Thursday for our monthly meeting and present the work they created followed by a demonstration or two (time permitting).

Tell your woodworking friends.  This will be a special presentation.

P.S. Take a look at the current Fine Woodworking magazine for a photo of Frank’s piece that was entered in the Texas Furniture Show.