14 Jul 20 – Workshop Activity Night

On Tuesday 14 July 2020, we held the Club’s now renamed online Workshop Activity Night from the comfort of our homes.  We were pleased to see 28 members attending and also some guests that came to see what woodturning was all about.  After the initial welcomes, we gave a quick master class in using the chat function in zoom to send messages/questions to everyone and then private messages to individuals.  This is important feature to learn as it will enable questions to be raised during the online demos. Hopefully everyone understood how to do it, but if anyone is still struggling, please contact myself or Alan.

I am pleased to announce that since the meeting, Alan Buckle has withdrawn his resignation and is now fully reinstated as the Club’s Secretary.  We warmly welcome him back to the post and thank him for all the work he has done and continues to do to enable the online aspects of the Club to happen.

Mick Close will be opening the Club Shop at the Village Hall again on the 25 July 2020, 10am to midday. As per the government rules on wearing a face mask whilst in shops, this will apply to our shop and please abide by the social distancing rules.  Martin & Pat Pidgen will also be there selling wood, so if you need something specific, give him a call, his details are all on the Contact page.  The car park at the hall is having major work done to improve it so hopefully by the 25th it should be done.

To add to future online Workshop Activity Nights, we are in the process of arranging to have a bandsaw master class by Record Power and also someone from Robert Sorby to give some instruction on the use of the Pro-Edge Sharpening System, so keep an eye out for them.

The evening got started with me showing some of the items I have been making, mainly for commisions and then a bowl for me, which was my first attempt at using the texturing tool as demonstrated by Chris Parker.  Unfortunately, it did not go to plan so the bowl ended up a lot smaller but still came out ok, albiet missing the texturing.  Maybe Elm was not the best choice of woods, but we live and learn by our mistakes.  We asked last time to see not only what went right but also what went wrong as hopefully by showing our mistakes others can also learn from it.  So next time it goes wrong, keep what is left and show us. I then took you for a tour around my workshop which hopefully you found interesting.

Zak then showed us a video of him making a sweet chestnut bowl with some colouring.  Then it was Chris’s turn and we watched a rather wet piece of Walnut being made into a rather shapely goblet as shown in the featured image at the top of this post.  Then it was back to me and I showed a speeded up video of me making some wooden dolls for a customers order on which I used a Paul Howard Sphere turning jig, which, yes its expensive, and spheres can be turned by hand without any jigs, just not by my hand, so hence I brought the jig.  Alan then showed us his video of some texturing with a Proxon Arbour Tech around the underside of a sycamore bowl.

We then asked around all those present to show us what they had been making and wow, you lot have been busy.  This lockdown has had one advantage of getting people back in the workshops and turning again which is great.  We had 10 people showing what they had made, so please see the photos provided below.  Remember, if you show us what you have made, if you can send me some uncropped photos, I can then put them into a news post like this.

I would really like for other people to provide the words for these type of posts rather than my take on it.  If interested in being a bit of a journalist/reporter, please contact me.

So, there you have it, that’s what we got up to and what you missed.  It would be great to see alot more faces at the next meeting which is on Tues 28th July starting at 7pm, but we will open up the meeting from 6:30pm.  This will be to watch our next full live demo by Pat Carroll.  Pat is going to be doing his demo from his workshop across in Ireland, which at least this time, we won’t have to standby with the fire extinguishers like we did when he came to the Village Hall.

If you want to join in with these online Workshop Activity Nights and watch future online demos, please ensure your membership fee has been paid.  If you have not yet paid, please contact Alan Selden, the Membership Secretary by selecting the Membership Enquiry option on the Contact form, filling in your details and a message to him.  Any Guests who are not members are very much welcome and we will honour the First Night For Free Flyer as advertised on this website.  However, if you are a Guest, you can’t just turn up as normal, we need prior notice of your intention to come to any online meetings.  Please contact Alan Buckle, the Club Secretary using the Contact form and select General Enquiry filling in your details and a message to him.  Alan B will then add you to his expected attendance list and send you the link to the zoom meeting via email so that you will be allowed to join the zoom meeting.  Remember, please ensure you have your full name displayed on zoom when you join the meetings and not your device name or some other name that has been populated by your device automatically.  If you need help with that contact us and we will try and help you.  If we do not recognise your name when entering the waiting room, you may not be allowed to join the meeting.  This is a security measure to protect the meeting from hackers.    

As mentioned last month, we would really appreciate those that attended the meeting to leave some feedback in the comments below, good or bad. Your comments will not appear immediately as I have to approve all comments before they appear on the website.  If you are reading this, but did not attend, can you tell us why you did not attend as if there is anything we can do to change your mind or help to get you involved, please let us know.

As you can appreciate, the future of the Club is a bit up in the air at the moment and we do not know for sure what the next few months and 2021 will bring, and importantly, if we will ever be able to finally meet again in the Village Hall.  We also have the new situation that a few demonstrators since investing alot of money in the technology to do online demos, they will no longer be offering to travel to Clubs to do physical demos.  We might have in future, the case of watching online demos but shown in the Village Hall, which would be very different.  This does however, open up endless possibilities of having a mixture of physical demos in the Hall and online demos to enable us to see demonstrators from around the world whilst sitting hopefully in the Village Hall.  Also, if you are not feeling so good, the weather is bad, or you don’t like driving at night, you could still watch the demo via zoom in the comfort of your home so you don’t miss out.  The Committee is dedicated to try and provide the best Club that we can in the circumstances and as such, we will be shortly holding an Extra Ordinary Committee Meeting to discuss the future.  Once we have agreed the way forward and have some proposals for you, we intend to hold an EGM via zoom, open to all members.  If you have any ideas/suggestions on what you want us to do and include in these new online meetings or any other suggestions, please let us know, as remember its your Club at the end of the day.  That’s it, your turn to get typing!!