Newsletter - January 7, 2018 - Mid-Island Woodworkers' Guild

Greetings and Happy New Year to Mid-Island Woodworkers, families and friends!

We are off to our third year of shared woodworking experiences under the direction of our new Executive:

President: Tony Dobson
Vice-President – Membership: Ed Tremblay
Vice-President – Programs and Events: Dave Workman
Treasurer: Steve Neil
Secretary: Bill Beese
Member-at-Large: Bob Armstrong
Librarian: Peter Clement

We are certainly looking forward to a year of fellowship, learning and fun, and we will start things off at our next General Meeting on Wednesday, January 10, at 6:30 pm in Meeting Room A at 355 Wakesiah Avenue (Nanaimo District Secondary School) with a presentation by Bill Beese on wood properties and identification. (Bill has also agreed to give a presentation on the carving process for a decoy at some future presentation.)

Also in January, we will be having our second instructional workshop on Saturday, January 20 from 9:00 am to 12 noon in Building 165, Room 104 at Vancouver Island University. This session on First Aid, geared towards a woodworking shop, will be conducted by Eric Brand from the Royal Canadian Search And Rescue. This workshop will have a fee of $20 per person and you must be a member of Mid-Island Woodworkers’ Guild in order to participate. (Since this is true for all of our instructional activities, please convince your woodworking – or wannabe woodworker – friends that it would just make great sense to join us officially and be a part of our wonderful group and to learn with us, or from the more experienced of our members.)

With regrets for an oversight in not taking pictures at our wonderful December meeting whereby quite a number of members showed some amazing pieces of work, I am attaching a few pictures that were sent to me by Tom Hedekar of his curling “stone(s)” (as well as a couple of other items from his lathe), and the mini-workbench that Bob Armstrong showed and which will be the subject of an project-based workshop – probably on the last weekend of January, or perhaps the first weekend in February.

Also in December, the “shop tour” of the shops of Gord Sjoquist, Thorne Underwood, Glen Smith and Tony Dobson was well-attended with about 10 members who managed to squeeze in an excellent lunch at the Lantzville Pub before completing the tour. Gord’s shop is a model of well-equipped, and pre-build design of dust control and heating systems; Thorne’ shop is a model of compactness and economy of space; Glen’s massive space allocation has had its working area reduced to manageable size by creating stacks for an amazing amount of wood storage; Tony’s shop has a decent floor size (double car garage) of about 500 sq. ft. into which he has located a full complement of standard power and hand tools while locating his dust collection system outside in a sound-proofed storage shed.

As mentioned at the December meeting by Bob Armstrong, MIWG will hold a competition to be judged in February based on your ability to create an original piece of work from “no more than 3 board feet”. This time, pictures will be taken! I hope that you have begun your planning for this “objet d’art” (or function!)

And finally, please let us know (info@miwg.ca) if you are not a member and would like to join in order to participate in our instructional programs and the general fellowship of our group. Meanwhile, we welcome all visitors and family members to our meetings.

Best wishes to all for 2018!

Keep those tools sharp!

Tony

p.s. Membership fees are now due for 2018. If you haven’t already done so, please plan on paying at our next meeting on Wednesday, January 10, and also handing in your updated Registration Information and Waiver. (Download and print from https://miwg.ca/membership-information.) See you there!

Bob Armstrong’s Mini-Workbench