November
Randy Johnson
Topic of "Finial Design"
October
Stacey Hager
Topic of "Setting Yourself Up for Success"
Stacey's Handout:
Click Here
I am a genuine “Ding-Dong Daddy” from Dumas
(a small town at the very top of
Texas). I was born in April
of 1942. At the age of eight, I began sweeping and
carrying out shavings at my father’s planning mill
and cabinet shop.
I worked there until I was 18.
I always thought of the job as a means of
earning pocket change.
Only later did I realize that I had received
a full European style apprenticeship.
I began turning at about twelve.
My “pocket change” (with a little help from
oil field jobs) turned into “college money”.
I pursued my interest in science, math,
music, and girls earning two and nine/tenths
degrees…and a wife.
I taught Chemistry, Physics, and
Microbiology at the high school, junior college,
and university level.
I am now retired, dividing my time among
traveling, turning, tool making, and … none of the
rest begins with T.
With school, family, jobs, the Army, and all
of the dang-things-that-break, I turned very little
in my 20’s and 30’s.
I joined AAW and CTWA in the 80’s and
discovered many tools and techniques that my father
never imagined.
I like experimenting; therefore, I seldom do
anything exclusively.
Learning to make and use new tools
fascinates me and is probably my most constant
endeavor.
Each year I help a number of beginning
turners discover the joy of turning wood.
I also help experienced turners solve
problems and learn new techniques.
I am currently working on how and why
turning tools work (i.e. Cutting Theory).
I believe that if you understand the nature
of wood and the physics of a cutting edge, you can
solve most woodturning problems.
In the course of almost 60 years of working
in shops and laboratories, I have stumbled upon a
number of things that work for me.
I like to pass on what I have discovered and
what others have been kind enough to teach me. I
believe it is this enthusiastic eagerness to share
ideas, skill, information, and techniques that
bonds wood turners into a vibrant brotherhood.
Stacey W. Hager
September
John Lauderbaugh
Topic of "Inside out Snowman"
August
Janice Levi
Topic of "Secrets of Turning Backyard Pin"
Janice's Handout:
Click Here
I began turning in
2001 when a television show on woodturning revived
a childhood interest I had experienced when my
father let me hold various tools and make cuts in
spindles mounted on an old Sears lathe.
Upon receiving a new lathe for my birthday,
I immediately joined the local organization,
Gulf Coast
Woodturners Association,
which has an outstanding mentoring and teaching
program.
Woodturning became
a passion and I wanted to learn as much as possible
as soon as possible.
A few months after joining the club, I
signed up for my first day long hands-on class with
a guest turner by the name of
Richard Raffin. What a way to
get started!
Over the years, I
have continued to explore many facets of turning.
I enjoy making delicate finials for boxes
and ornaments.
I have more recently become interested in
turning common pine—a wood I was warned to avoid
years ago.
I also like trying my hand at enhancing
turnings with dyes, carving, wood burning and other
treatments.
I was not just
interested in learning to turn, however; I was also
interested in being a part of the process for
promoting woodturning.
I served on the GCWA
Board
in 2002 and became a two-term president from
2003-2004.
After 35 years as a
drama teacher and alternative school counselor, I
retired and my husband and I moved to the central
Texas
area.
After taking off two years from turning (I was the
general contractor for building my new house), I
was glad to get back to it.
As soon as I could get my lathes unpacked, I
joined the Brazos Valley Woodturners in the
Waco
area. I
currently am serving as president.
We are a small club, but a growing group.
Again, my focus is on promoting woodturning,
especially with younger turners.
I am also serving as vice-president-elect of
the Southwest Association of Turners (SWAT).
My turnings have
appeared in several shows:
(1)
Galveston Grand Opera House Eight Artist
Show featuring Hurricane Ike turned wood—2010,
(2)
Houston Center for Contemporary Craft juried
show, “Texas Turned”—2009, (3) Houston Center for
Contemporary Craft juried show, “Wood Turned
Art”—2005, (4) Houston Woodcarver’s Show—2004.
I have enjoyed
demonstrating for my local clubs—Gulf Coast
Woodturners and Brazos Valley Woodturners.
I was also a regional demonstrator in the
2009 Southwest Association of Turners Symposium.
My pieces have been in the Fleury Gallery,
Houston, TX;
Eagles Nest Gallery,
La Porte, TX;
Ice House Pottery and Gallery,
Luling, TX
July
John Horn
Topic of "Turning Duplicates"
Sooner
or later we all are asked to make one or more
duplicates of a turning on the lathe.
With a minimum of experience, turning the
first piece is not usually a problem.
The difficulties begin with making the
following pieces look exactly like the original.
John’s demonstration will illustrate some of
the techniques used to assure that an item can be
closely duplicated. He
will show how a person can avoid some of the common
mistakes that are made when copying a pattern and
how to reduce the errors that are often introduced
when turning multiples.
One of the
challenging projects that require making duplicates
is a chess set. Most of
the traditional chess sets are lathe turned with
some carving on the knights and other details on
some of the major pieces.
Making your own chess set is an
accomplishment that a number of woodturners would
like to enjoy but
keep putting it off because of the perceived
difficulty of making a number of small duplicate
pieces. By learning duplication techniques,
a little carving and making a few jigs, the task
can be accomplished to most people's satisfaction.
If there is a problem, just remember it is just a
piece of wood and there is more wood where that
piece came from.
Each year since
1998, John has demonstrated for at least three or
four monthly chapter meetings a year for various
woodturning clubs in
Texas
and
Oklahoma.
To keep the audience from becoming bored
with his presentations, he demonstrates on a
different topic every year.
He has
demonstrated on the following topics at Texas Turn
or Two and SWAT every year since 1998 except 2004
and 2009.
“Turning a
Birdhouse Christmas Ornament”……………..… 1998
“Turning a Santa
Claus Nutcracker” …………………………1999
“Turning a
Threaded Lidded Box”
………………………….2000
“Quick and Easy
Turned Toys”
……………………………2001
“Woodturning
Fundamentals for Students and Teachers” ....
2002
“Taming the Skew”
……………………………………………..2003
“The Art of The
Peppermill” ……………………………………2005
“Turning Your
Scraps into Wearable Art” …………………. 2006
“Tools and
Techniques for Endgrain Turning” ………………. 2007
“Making the Most
of your Mini Lathe”………………………... 2008
Educated as an
instructor of high school musicians, John has spent
a major portion of his life teaching a variety of
subjects from high school band and choir to adult
computer applications.
Now he teaches regular classes at the Woodcraft
store in
Addison
and one-on-one sessions on woodturning topics in
his shop for beginning to intermediate turners.
When he is not teaching and attending
woodturning meetings, he stays busy turning
contract jobs for corporations and individuals on
one or more of his four wood lathes that he uses
for turning and classes.
A member of the
AAW, he is active in both the Woodturners of North
Texas in
Fort Worth
and the Golden Triangle Woodturners in
Denton.
June
Ken Rodgers
Topic of "Platters"
Ken demonstrated the turning of a large platter,
using a regular chuck. He also demonstrated
the start to finish turning a platter starting at
only 1 inch thick.
May
All WNT Members
Topic of "Member Tip's and Trick's"
The meeting program for May will be "Tips and Tricks" as presented by our members. We are encouraging all members to come to the meeting with a Tip
or Trick that they can snare with the rest of the group. I have several tips
planned to share and several others have indicated they would participate,
but we would like to have a broad participation from the membership.
April
Larry Anderson
Topic of "Homemade Turning Tools"
I
will be doing some simple stuff that anyone can do
on their wood lathe. Some of the things will be
small drive centers, a weighted knock-out bar, long
and short tool rests, cheap inserts to use
unhandled tools in the Trent Bosch, John Jordan,
Oneway or other handles, some different jigs for
sharpening the tips used in a lot of hollowing
tools, power sanding for deep, hollow vessels and
if time permits, other items.
Below are some pictures of some of the items
I intend to make.
I hope to get people to open up to new ideas
to make woodturning easier.
Larry
has been turning wood for about 20 years.
He has taken classes from many well know
wood turners, including Ray Key, Richard Raffan,
David Ellsworth, Trent Bosch, John Jordan, and Ron
Fleming.
Larry worked in a machine shop right out of
high school using a metal lathe.
After military service, he worked 33 years
for the telephone company.
He just recently started a new job in a
machine shop.
Larry’s two favorite pastimes are
woodturning and drag racing motorcycles.
He receives so much enjoyment out of
woodturning and meeting the people involved that he
doesn't understand why everybody isn’t a wood
turner.
March
David Dick
Topic of "Long stem goblets"
David Dick, of
Austin,
will be the featured demonstrator at our March
meeting. His topic,
“Long Stem Goblets on the Mini-Lathe”, will show
some easy ways to join parts of the goblet together
which will allow a turner of any skill level to
achieve a long stem goblet of any length.
The hollowing of the goblet will be done
with a spindle gouge which is an extremely
efficient end grain hollowing tool.
He will show an easily made alternative to
the skew, and an easy way to produce mortise and
tennon joinery on the lathe.
Two
tools that he loves to use are the skew and the
skew-chi gouge. He will
use both of them in the demo. Dick
has a tip or two that lets his students start to
use a skew easily.
Nothing beats practice.
David has been turning for about 17 years.
He started by making a lot of pens for sale.
As his interest in pens wound down he
started turning parts for other people’s broken
furniture. David is a
Past President of the Central Texas Woodturners and
a professional contract woodturner. To this day he
considers himself more of a spindle turner than a
bowl turner.
February
Devore Burch
Topic of "Weird Bowls"
When you first
see a “Weird Bowl” like the ones Devore Burch
makes, it is a big mystery as to how it can be
turned on a lathe.
For our program on February 25th,
Devore will reveal his secrets about how to
make this very unusual bowl.
Devore made his first “Weird Bowl” in
1933, 77 years ago, when he was in a high
school woodshop class.
Since that time he has made and either
sold or given away over 100 of these vessels.
It was one of these bowls on the cover
of Popular Woodworking Magazine that attracted
the attention of Larry Roberts and others
who
were in the initial stages of forming the
Woodturners of North Texas.
Devore was asked to come to a meeting
and demonstrate how his bowls were made.
After the demo he quickly became one of
the charter members of the WNT and since that
time has been winning collaborative projects.
Having
recently turned 92 years old, Devore still
regularly turns multiple items as gifts for
Mary, his wife, to give to her friends as
presents.
“Dee”
now turns on a Super Shop for the last few
years but he used a Shop Smith as his lathe of
choice since 1950.
For many years
Devore Burch wrote and illustrated articles for
four major woodworking magazines, including
Fine Woodworking and Popular Woodworking.
In fact, it was the picture of his
“Weird Bowl” on the cover of Popular
Woodworking that prompted John Horn to look him
up in the phone book after discovering that
Devore was from
Fort Worth.
Devore invited him to a club meeting
back in 1989 and the rest is history.
A reprint of Devore's Weird Bowl article can be
found at this site:
http://www.channelislandswoodturners.org/CymaBowl.htm
January
Oren Zehner of
Roanoke
Topic of "How Do I Chuck Thee? Let Me Count the
Ways."
Demo Download -
COMMON AND SPECIALITY CHUCKS FOR USE ON THE
WOODLATHE.doc
Oren
Zehner was born in Tonkawa,
OK, where he attended
Northern
Oklahoma College
and finished his teaching degree at
Oklahoma
State University
in Stillwater,
OK.
He started turning in high school and
continued turning while teaching for the next 29
years in both public and vocational schools with
classes in woodworking, drafting, cabinetmaking and
woodturning for high school students and adults.
He moved from
Oklahoma
and settled in Roanoke
and one of the requirements he had for his new
house was for it to have a three car garage so he
would have room for his lathes: a Vicmarc Mini, a
One-Way 1224 with extension, and a VB36 bowl lathe.
While he doesn’t specialize in any
particular turning style, he likes turning
miniatures and that contributed to his interest in
a watch making career.
He is currently a member of
the Northeastern Oklahoma Woodturners Association
where he presided as president, vice-president,
treasurer and demonstrator for many years.
He is also a member of the Golden Triangle
Woodturners and has been a member of the AAW for
many years.
If you have ever watched the Woodturning
Workshop hosted by Tim Yoder from
Tulsa, OK,
you might have seen him on the television.
He has attended several AAW and SWAT
symposiums and numerous seminars which included
classes taught by John Jordan, Ron Flemming, Frank
Sudol, Trent Bosch, etc.
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