8 Aug 2023 – Hands on Night

With the weather looking a bit better and it being holiday season, we were pleased to still see 33 members and guests through the door, making it a rather busy night.

With potentially three instructors not available, we only set up 3 lathes with two being manned by Chris and John M and a spare, which as it happens, worked in our favour, as Darren managed to get to the meeting after all.  Thank you to all our instructors and our merry band of helpers setting it all up and clearing away at the end of the evening.

It was great to see three new guests who fancied trying their hand at Woodturning which under the instruction of Darren and John M soon saw them having a go.  Hopefully we will see them back in the future.

Chris, as normal had a crowd gathered around his lathe, where he utilised the ideas of his audience to provide suggestions on what to turn and the design choices during the process.

A few announcements were made to remind all present of the spaces we still have on the November Training Day, so please book now.  Also, the painting that we would like to get done at the Sept Training Day which is on Sat 16 Sept 23.  If you are free and can lend a hand, it will get the job done much quicker.

Vic Atkinson, our Club President, gave a brief announcement regarding an ex Club Chairman, Mr Dave Emmerson who was one of the founder members of our Club, who has sadly lost his Wife, Christine in tragic circumstances recently.  She used to serve refreshments and homemade cakes for the members during the meetings which was very much appreciated.  Our thoughts go out to Dave and his family at this very difficult time. A moments silence was held as a gesture of respect, of which we thank everyone for their support, as we appreciate most of those present will not have had the pleasure to have known either Dave or Christine.  Thank you.

At the last Training Day, all four students were needing to be sanding the projects being made at the same time which as we only had two Camvac dust extractors available, left a lot of dust within the hall on all surfaces and presented the obvious H&S dust issue.  We are therefore pleased to announce that to improve our Club facilities, keep the Village Hall Committee happy and most importantly reduce the dust hazard, we have now purchased two more Camvac dust extractors that will be put to use at the next Training Day in September.

A great display of items made by our members were on the exhibition table including several Skew Chisel challenges set by Jim Etcher at the last demo. Well done everyone and we hope to see more Skew chisels being used hopefully in the future.  If you missed the demo, we have now received the video link which will be sent out shortly by email to all full members.  If you are a PAYG member you could also see this recorded demo after payment of the £8 fee.  Please get in contact with Me, Martin if you would like to do this.

Dave and Mel had a busy night in the Club shop which is now cashless, so thank you for supporting this new advancement in the way we run the Club.  We still have the half price sale on clocks and project kits so don’t miss this opportunity to bag yourself a bargain.  We do have a lot of pen blank size pieces of wood that Paul had set a challenge to make something from them which does not necessarily mean making a pen, but you can if you want.  If you are interested in having a go at this challenge please help yourself to the pen blanks out in the lean to.  Mick also has a lot of items for sale from a workshop clearance he did, some of which we have just done a news post to feature some of the higher ticket items, so please check that our HERE.

For more photos of the evening please check out the Gallery.