Greetings and Happy New Year to the MIWG Blog followers!
MIWG members had an absolutely amazing presentation at our January meeting last Wednesday when Warren Bailey showed us slides and talked about his work of restoring old violins. He is one of only a handful of violin restoration experts who are working on very valuable Guarneri, Amati, and Stradivari violins – world wide. His descriptions of the painstakingly fine woodworking involved in retaining all of the original work (and value) was astounding to learn, even as he described how he enhances the values of these treasured instruments while scraping away old finishes, or fixing cracks and holes in the wood. He certainly had all of us glued to our seats (with animal hide glue, of course, so that we could eventually leave.)
Our new Executive is off to a strong start for this year! Dave Workman, our President greeted everyone and welcomed newcomers. Glen Smith (Vice-President – Programs), Ed Tremblay (Chairperson – Wood Recovery) and Gord Shoquist (Chairperson – Shop Tours) outlined some of the activities planned for presentations, wood-recovery, shop visits and training workshops. Jim Dunsmoor is scheduled for our February 12 meeting. Jim will describe how he makes those beautiful, nested plywood bowls that were on display at the Woodwork Showcase in November.
The presenter for March isn’t finalized yet, but Glen has a number of prospects lined up for the coming months.
MIWG will hold a wood sale this coming Saturday, January 19 at Frost Fields starting at 10:00 a.m. Lunch will be roasted hot dogs, and refreshments will be available to all attendees. For more information on the details and location of this activity, please contact Ed Tremblay (wood_recovery@miwg.ca) or send an email to info@miwg.ca. We have lots of alder, arbutus, maple, beech, London Plane tree, fir, cedar, and spruce available, as well as abutus chunks for turners. Wood pricing has some variation, but the base price is $2.50 a Board Foot.
A number of courses are being planned on for this year. The first will be “Sketch-up: the Basics”, a workshop that I will conduct in late January or in February. Details will be provided as soon as I get some feedback on how many participants should be expected as well as skill-levels of those involved. Please send emails to me at info@miwg.ca if you are interested in participating.
As with all of our courses, there will be a course fee, and seats will be made available to MIWG members first. (Joining is easy! Go to our website, download and fill out the application and waiver forms, send them to our Vice-President – Membership, and make suitable arrangements to pay the annual fee of $50 as well as the once-only initiation fee of $25 for new members.)
As an aside, I strongly recommend that, if Sketchup is of interest to you, then you should immediately go to https://www.sketchup.com/download/make. Sketchup is changing its format, and the Sketchup Make version is the only one that is still “free” AND will reside on your own machine. Sketchup “Free” will not have all of the woodworking components, apparently, and Sketchup Pro is prohibitively expensive unless you are in it for profit! Sketchup Online has a monthly fee that will quickly cost more than even Sketchup Pro. You will actually be downloading Sketchup Pro, but the licence to use it will expire after a few weeks or usages, and then will revert to Sketchup Make.
In April, Steve Neil will be conducting a workshop on hand-cut dovetails, and judging by the show of hands at the last meeting, there is a lot of interest in this workshop!
And…a reminder to all members that Glen is hoping that we all produce and bring a “box” of some kind – as well as the annual dues (if you haven’t already paid) for the next meeting. Until then…safe and happy woodworking!
Tony