General Meeting November 2018 – Chip Carving & Instagram

President Joe Mannke called the meeting to order. There were 3 guest.

A spokesman from Advantage told us about some sales they have going on. Natural edge slabs are on sale for 15% off. They also have some 2×6 shorts of Amgelium Pedra (I’ve never heard of it before) from Brazil.

There is going to be an open house on Saturday December 1 from 9-5. They will be giving tours of there shop where the machines are and demos of using epoxy to fill gaps in the slabs. They will also have tables setup where individuals can sell some of there unwanted tools.

Everybody was encouraged to vote for one of the 11 designs for a club logo. The winner was announced after the break. To many peoples surprise, it was our old original logo with the hammer and saw.

Program: We had two programs

First, our own member Thelma Proctor talked about chip carving. In June she attended the John C. Campbell Folk School , located in southwestern North Carolina in Brasstown. About 20 minutes north of Georgia state line and 1 hour 15 minutes west of Franklin. It offers over 800 year-round weeklong and weekend classes for adults in craft, art, music, dance, cooking, gardening, nature studies, photography and writing. Small classes – 10 – 12 people. (www.folkschool.org).

It doesn’t take a large investment to get into chip carving: 2 Knives, a stabe knife and a cutting knife, and two ceramic sharpening stones, medium and ultra fine. The most time consuming part of chip carving is the layout, which is done directly on the wood using a .5mm pencil, a straight edge and a compass. The cutting knife is sharpened at a 10degree angle, while the stab knife is sharpened at a 30degree angle.

Most of the carving is done holding the work in your lap. If you are interested in getting into chip carving Thelma recommends two books, The Complete Guide to Chip Carving and Chip Carving Patterns, both by Wayne Barton.

Second, another one of our members, Gregg Casagrande introduced us to Instagram. This is the favorite social media program used by woodworkers. This is mainly a photo site with comments about the photo below them. Most of the woodworking magazines, along with a lot of the authors you read in the magazines, post pictures and comments.

Greg showed us how to get started using Instagram both on our cell phones an d on a computer.

It can be accessed either from a computer or with a free app on your smart phone. However it is intended to be a quick way to post a picture of what you are working on right from you phone with minimum of effort.

It’s easy to find other woodworkers by searching on a topic of interest.

Greg is posting pictures from the club as a way of letting people who don’t know about the club find out about us. The more we post the more people will follow us. Please email picture and notes to Greg ( gbighouse@gmail.com) so we will have lots of content.

Business:

Randy Cooper presented the treasurers report.
We presented 65 bowl to the Manatee food bank which they sold to raise money to buy food.
Al Brown is signing up people to work at The Woodworking Show at the State Fair Grounds in tampa in January
No Demo meeting this month, shop meet will be at Neil McCulloughs shop on Nov 26.
John Peasley reported on the Holiday Party which replaces our regular meeting. NOTE it starts at 6pm not the regular time of 7pm.
Andy DiLorenzo ask to speak for 5 minutes. He proposed a long legal sounding amendment to the bylaws preventing the club from participating in any fundraising efforts related to a religion. He also said the club has too much money in the club treasurery and dues should be cut in half. He admitted that this was all his idea and it had not been presented to the board. No action was taken, the board will discuss it at the next board meeting.