Professional Woodworkers Guild of Upper New Jersey meeting, May 19

Danny Birnbaum announced at the May CJWA meeting that CJWA members are welcome at the next Professional Woodworkers Guild of Upper New Jersey meeting which is being held at Danny’s shop on Wednesday, May 19th. Dinner begins at 6:30 PM, and the agenda will include a beam veneer saw demo and table saw cove tricks.

Danny’s shop is at 71 Glenwood Place, East Orange, NJ. The phone is (973)-675-8999.

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Tool sale in Colts Neck, Saturday, May 15, 10 AM

[UPDATE] The family is having another day of tool selling this Saturday, May 15.

A family contacted us about a tool sale that they are having this weekend. The father has passed away, and there are a lot of woodworking machinery and tools that the family is looking to sell.

Here’s the description as provided by the family. Pictures of the tools can be found in this photo gallery on our website. For questions, please contact Darlene Feldman at 732-500-5331.

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My Father was a tremendous collector of tools. We have a basement full of them to prove it! Dad spent 35 years working at Bell Telephone Laboratories/AT&T/Lucent Technologies as a Scientist with many Patents to his name. Woodworking was one of his hobbies. We enjoyed as a family what he created with his woodwrking skills but have finally convinced Mom it is time to depart with Dad’s basement full of what he considered treasures….MACHINES, HANDTOOLS< WOOD< NAILS IN EVERY SIZE, you name it …he owned it.

This Saturday, May 8th, at 19 Williamsburg South, Colts Neck, NJ at 10 AM we will have a private showing to Central Jersey Woodworkers. In addition to the machinery, we have boxes filled with tools, and a very large pile of wood for sale.

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May Meeting: Open Mike Night

The May CJWA meeting will be at 7 PM on Wednesday, May 12, and will be an open mike night.  This is an opportunity for CJWA members to give short presentations on projects they have been working on, woodworking tips and tricks, or anything else that may come to mind.

Also, don’t forget about our 8 board feet of wood contest. At the June meeting, we will have our yearly competition of CJWA member-made projects using up to 8 board feet of lumber. A copy of the contest rules can be downloaded here.

Make birdhouse kits with CJWA

A couple of times a year, CJWA sells birdhouse kits to help raise money for the club. Of course, to do this, we need birdhouse kits.  CJWA members will be gathering at John Steinmetz’s house (61 O’Rourke Drive, Robbinsville) on Saturday, May 15, at 9:00 AM to help make birdhouse and bird feeder kits. All the project wood, tools, and supplies will be provided.  All you have to bring is yourself. Hope to see you there!

April Meeting: Turning for Furniture Makers

The highlight of the April CJWA meeting was an excellent presentation by Tom Jones, president of the Atlantic Shore Woodturners woodturning club on how woodturning can be used for furniture projects. Tom was kind enough to bring his own lathe for this demonstration and was able to show a number of spindle turning techniques that could be used for furniture projects. Tom demonstrated the use of roughing gouges, spindle gouges, parting tools, and skew chisels to turn all the shapes and forms that can be used for furniture parts.

Tom had some good tips for turning for furniture projects.  He likes using a Sorby Stebcentre instead of a standard 4 prong drive center, as he thinks the Stebcentre gives more control over the holding of the workpiece. He said that spindle turning often will use higher speeds on the lathe compared to bowl turners, often in the 1800 rpm range. Good woods for turning tend to be harder, and fruit woods are very good for this purpose.

Here Tom shows how to use a caliper and parting tool to establish a specific measured diameter on a spindle piece.

And this is what not to do.