May 2005 | ||
| Email Newsletter of The St. Tammany Woodworkers Guild | ||
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NEXT MEETINGEARLY TIME6p Tues May 24
Gerald Gibson's
Shop Bring your folding chair and a donation of $3 and be prepared to enjoy a jambalaya supper prepared by Gerald and Linda. If you behave acceptably, you may get some of Linda's banana pudding.
Special Guest: Jack William, Gerald's friend, has just returned from a one-week course entitled " Building and Playing a Mountain Dulcimer" at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. Jack will tell us about his week at the school and demonstrate the results. Something very different from our normal demonstrations!
And, if time permits, Gerald will demonstrate some new |
WELL DONE! Annual Cochon de Lait 14 May, 2005
Over 40 members, guests and their families enjoyed the weather, food, and fellowship at the annual Cochon de Lait held at Dick & Julia Gahn's plantation on Saturday, May 14. Dick and his assistants were up at 6am to fire up his huge back-yard roasting pit and prepare the main entree, which was donated by the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum. The result, shown above, was declared ready about 3 pm, and was promptly chopped up, picked clean, and carried into the dining room where the pork joined turkey, many side dishes and desserts for the waiting crowd that had been socializing under the oak trees since noon. More photos can be found here. Special guests included David & Donna Carambat, Ann Hardee, and their families. David, Donna, & Ann are key individuals in the planning & execution of the Madisonville Wooden Boat Festival, and Dick thanked them on behalf of the Guild for their spendid cooperation in helping make a success of our Boatmaking for Kids project. |
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Highlights of April Meeting
BUSINESS
Walter Babst presided over the meeting held at Jim Sanguinetti's workshop April 26, 2005. Nineteen members and two guests, Joe Perret's son Jay, and Harland Johnson's friend Conrad Heibey, from Victoria, BC, were present.
Babst reported that he had received a thank-you note from June Blanchard for the flowers sent to John Blanchard's memorial service. Babst will invite her and Sharon Jackson to the Cochon de Lait.
Jim Sanguinetti reported that there are 33 paid up members, and enouraged delinquent members to pay their dues.
Dick Gahn reported that he has nine boxes of boat hull blanks for members to pick up. He asked members to keep the hulls until the Boat Festival to alleviate storage problems at his shop. Sanguinetti has agreed to make the rudders. Everyone is encouraged to accumulate scraps suitable for use as topside components.
Babst made a plea for volunteers to do demos at upcoming meetings. In the discussion that followed, Babst agreed to discuss a possible demo with Bob Christman; Chic Dausch agreed to call Frank Natal about a demo of a ringmaster;
Bob Christman will talk to Chris Wascom about a coping demo; Gerard St. Romain agreed to do a demo of carving with a grinder.
SHOW AND TELL
As a followup to last month's demonstration of raised face panels by Dick Gahn, Henry Simon showed samples of commercially manufactured raised panel cabinet doors. The panels are stained and finished prior to installation, thereby preventing any unfinished spaces from showing if the panel contracts at a later time.
His solution was to first build a special jig (see photo on left) that can be adjusted to hold a wide range of material thicknesses. Each rail can mounted in the jig so that a plunge router After the mortises are completed, the shoulders of the 1" deep tenons are cut using a radial arm saw, and the ends are trimmed with a bandsaw and rounded with by hand with a rasp. The resulting fit is excellent.
The shutter blades were made on a shaper. End pins were cut from aluminum rods to prevent rusting. The last key item is the vertical wooden rod that will move all of the blades. Jim discussed the options for fastening that rod to the blades, and concluded that he would try to use an air-powered stapler to insert staples part way into the center edge of each blade, and then staple the vertical rod so that the staples crosslink. (Note -- Jim has since reported success with this method.)
Jim intends to use a high volume low pressure sprayer to apply a finish to the shutters, one of which is shown on the right. He is worried that his although his compressor has adequate pressure it may not have the volume throughput he would like. Wayne Thompson suggested that additional volume capacity could be added by linking another tank (or tanks) in series to the current tank to give a larger reservoir. As an aside he told of the novel use of a large truck tire as a portable "air storage tank."
Thanks to Jim for an informative evening! | ||
The President's CornerThe turnout for the Cochon de Lait was excellent, as was the food --- the weather cooperated, and we definitely passed a good time! Our heartfelt thanks to the Madisonville Maritime Museum for their donation of the main course, and to Dick and Julia Gahn for their hard work in hosting this event, which is an annual highlight.
We continue to have some vacant spots for demonstrations in meetings scheduled for the second half of 2005. We've started off with some excellent ones, so please volunteer if you can, or help line up someone else to share their knowledge with us. Also, if you'd like to host a meeting at your workshop, please let us know. Hosting does not obligate you to do the demonstration, and we all learn from seeing how others have set up their workshops.
Keep your eyes and ears open for potential new members -- it's always nice to get new ideas and new experiences in the Guild, and we certainly could use an infusion of youth to bring our average seniority down!
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Note from the Treasurer
There are still some members who have not paid their annual dues of $10.00. Please do so as soon as possible. You may mail a payment to the St. Tammany Woodworkers Guild at the following address: | ||
Don McLaren showed a bowl he had turned from a section of an oak tree cut down a few months before. Moisture content of the green wood was about 22% when he turned it, and although the resulting exposure of the wood defects was spectacular, the bowl began to deform as it dried, with significant deformation occurring overnight. The bowl is still drying 
two months later, and it definitely illustrates the deformation forces that occur as a result of drying.
Jim Sanguinetti demonstrated a method for making odd-sized mortises using a router with a special jig. He has been building a number of large shutters similar in concept to the small commercial shutter shown in the photo on the right,
and needed a way to make sturdy mortise and tenon joints for the one inch thick outer frames. The rails are 3-1/2 inches wide, and the stiles are two inches wide, which dictates a need for a repeatable mortise about 3"x5/16"x1-1/8", with a matching tenon one inch long.
can be used to make mortises with repeatable precision. The jig can be adjusted to accomodate material thicknesses up to two inches, and the guides on the top of the jig can be set to confine the router to provide the desired mortise crossection.
Looking Ahead |
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| DATE | HOST LOCATION | EVENT |
|---|---|---|
| May 24 | Gerald Gibson | Regular meeting with Jambalaya supper provided by Gerald -- special demo of constructing a mountain dulcimer by Jack Williams, and a display by Gerald of tools from the Houston Woodworking Show |
| June 28 | Harland Johnson | Regular meeting -- demo (to be confirmed) of carving with a grinder, by Gerard St. Romain |
| July 26 | TBA | Regular meeting -- band saw box demo by Don McLaren |
| August 23 | TBA | Regular meeting -- demo to be announced |
| September 27 | Dick Gahn | Regular meeting -- demo to be announced |
| October 15 and 16 | Madisonville | Wooden Boat Festival |
| October 25 | TBA | Regular meeting -- demo to be announced |
| November 22 | TBA | Regular meeting -- demo to be announced |
| December 8 (Thursday) | Tchefuncte Country Club | Christmas Banquet |
Buy/Sell/Trade
FOR SALE: |
Guild Contacts
President - Walter Babst - wmbabst@bellsouth.net |