December Meeting: Holiday potluck and member projects

At the December meeting, CJWA celebrated the holiday season with our annual holiday potluck dinner.  As usual, there was a lot of great food and great company.  Many thanks to Paul Dzioba for coordinating the potluck this year.

In addition to the potluck dinner, CJWA members showed projects that they had made for the season.

Marc Gaertner showed a pair of end tables that he made.  The top of the near table was made from zebrawood.  Marc said that getting the angles of the legs right was a challenge.

 Paul Dzioba showed a pair of backsaws that he made.  They cut very well in use.  The steel for the saw plate was obtained from McMaster-Carr.

Frank Lovero showed an Adirondack-inspired bench in progress that he is making.  He has several of these benches being made that will eventually be installed at the Monmouth Museum.

David White made a pair of square gears, and in this video he proves that they actually do work.

Happy Holidays to you from CJWA!

Edit: Frank Lovero was previously incorrectly identified above.  We apologize for the error, especially to Frank.

December meeting: Holiday potluck dinner and Holiday projects

Our next meeting will be at 7 PM on December 8. We will be having our annual holiday potluck dinner.  Paul Dzioba has graciously volunteered to help coordinate the dinner.  Thanks, Paul!

All CJWA members are invited, and may bring a guest. If this is your first CJWA meeting, please feel welcome to come as well.  We encourage CJWA members to bring a dish enough for 8 people.  Please email Paul at zodo@att.net as to what you may be bringing, whether it is a main dish, side dish, dessert, beverages, or plates/napkins/plastic ware.  Paul will be making sure that we have a good distribution of food so we don’t wind up with 1 main dish and 25 desserts — not that there’s anything wrong with that.

This is the season for holiday presents, and one of the advantages to being woodworkers is that we can make presents instead of fighting off the crowds on Black Friday.  We also would love to have any CJWA members who are making gifts for the holidays to bring them for a show and tell.

We would also like to remind everyone that elections for all of the CJWA officer positions are coming in January, and anyone is welcome to run for any of the officer positions: President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, and Librarian.  If you are interested, you are invited to talk to the current officers for information.

November meeting: How to make a ball and claw foot by Bob Rozaieski

 Our next meeting will be at 7 PM on November 10. We are very excited to have Bob Rozaieski demonstrate how to make a ball and claw foot at CJWA’s November meeting.  Bob extensively utilizes hand tools in his work, and runs the Logan Cabinet Shoppe website and video podcast.  Bob has a number of highly educational videos on his website demonstrating hand tool techniques, including complete series of complete project videos showing how to build an end table and a workbench.  Please come join us for what should be an excellent demonstration.

CJWA clothing and hats available soon

CJWA clothing is going to be available again soon, including T shirts, golf shirts, sweatshirts, caps, and hooded jackets.  Joe Thein has done a great job looking into this, and will catalogs to the November meeting for everyone to peruse.  Pricing will be somewhat dependent on the size of our order, so the more people that order clothes, the less expensive they will be, and who doesn’t love a bargain?

CJWA goes to WIA, and The King of Dovetails is crowned

A number of CJWA members made the trip out to Covington, KY, for the 2010 Woodworking in America conference, which was organized by Popular Woodworking magazine.  It was 3 days full of very useful classes and an unparalleled opportunity to try tools from some of the best woodworking tool makers in the country today. Among the CJWA members making the trip were Frank Vucolo, Simon Stark, and Jerry van de Sande. 

Besides just attending the talks, you could enter the Hand Tool Olympics, which was a fun opportunity to test your hand tool skills.  Simon Stark took first place in the dovetail competition, making a dovetail by hand accurately in 5 minutes 40 seconds, and won a set of chisels for his performance.  Congratulations, Simon!