West Michigan Woodturners is a club in the Kalamazoo and Portage area for woodturners of all levels
Featuring a demonstration by Ernie Conover on how to turn to things that look alike. Ernie says that turning one of anything is straight forward but turning several that look alike, be they spindles or bowls, is much more difficult. In this demonstration he will share with you sure fired methods and tricks to make respective turnings with confidence. He will cover both faceplate and spindle turning
Alan Lacer is planning to share many of his secrets about finishing and enhancing the projects that he has turned in his personal studio. Since finishing turned wood is a challenge having Alan share the lessons and tricks that he has learned should be very educational and help us raise and improve our own finishing skills to make our own turnings more spectacular.
One of our long time members, Gary Bean, will give a demonstration on how he turns Captive Rings. The Captive rings are a great decoration on many spindle turned items such as goblets, baby rattles and holiday tree decorations with finials and rings, just to mention a few examples. Gary does some wonderful turns and his demonstration promises to be another very educational and informative chance to learn this historic turning technique.
The demonstration will be the Lon Goble’s low/no fuss finishing technique conducted by Lon himself and aided by Len Bosma and Bruce Dannenhauer. The demonstration will go through the process of “finishing” a bowl beginning with the sanding, then the finish application and finally the final buffing. The demonstration will present a good and easy way to have a food safe lustrous finished wood turning. It promises to have you rethink how you’re currently doing you finishing.
Chris Thompson President of the Michiana Woodturners in Niles will be doing a demo to show how he turns and makes his Christmas gnomes. This would be a great tabletop or shelf holiday decoration for your own home or gift for someone. With this demo Chris will demonstrate how he makes the project including shaping the body and hat. Plus, also turning a ball for the nose.
Barbara Dill sharing a brand new demo focused on multi-axis and split turnings. We will be introduced to some new techniques in woodturning from this professional and skilled woodturner. Below are a few comments from Barbara.
This demo is about Multi axis spindles in general and in specific, split turning‘s. I will take 20 to 30 minutes to go over a conceptual and systematic way to understand multi axis spindle turning. Split turnings are always found in quadrant one since they’re parallel axes and arc type so that’s the demo I will give for the rest of the time that we have. It will be pre-recorded as I have no Wi-Fi in the country that is reliable. I want it to be interactive meaning that you will be able to ask me questions.
‘Tis the Season
What is more symbolic of the Holiday Season than a snowman? (Well, maybe a Christmas tree, but we turned trees last December). So this year, for our Christmas ornament demonstration, Peter Keith will show us how to turn a snowman ornament following the “Easy-to-turn Snowman Ornament” article written by Nick Cook for the American Woodturner Winter 1999. A copy of which will be distributed along with a story-board or two for turning snowmen.
Our September 10th 2022 meeting was a Hands-On Class will focus on pen turning. Jim Hawkins, member of the West Michigan Woodturners, will demonstrate how to turn a pen during the meeting. Pens are fun and (relatively) easy turning project. They can become cherished gifts for family and friends. Pen turning is essentially spindle turning on a small scale. It requires some relatively inexpensive equipment (mandrel, press and a pen kit).
Our own member Rick Zinser, will do a demonstration about how he prepares fresh wood for turning on a lathe. Ricks background is from his experience at Western Michigan University training Industrial Arts Teachers on how to do a demonstration that holds the attention of the audience and presents information about the topic in a rememberable format.
Rick’s demonstration will be of special interest to our members that have wanted to do a club demonstration but feel uneasy about doing one because they have not done a demonstration yet. We will learn many pointers about preparing fresh wood to be turned and how to do our own demonstration for our fellow members.
We will be treated to the basics and insights of doing Segmented Wood Turning by our own member Charlie Fuentes. While Charlie is our resident Segmented specialists he will discuss and show lots of information about getting started, including the common problems and how to avoid them. This promises to be an information packed demonstration. Then to top off all of that, Charlie will treat us by actually turning a segmented form.
West Michigan Woodturners 