CJWA January Meeting: Open Mike Night

Despite the snowstorm and the rescheduling, there were a lot of members participating in the Open Mike Night at the first CJWA meeting of 2011. So without further ado:

Joe Ferraro showed a box made with double dovetails using the Incra jig.

William Duffield brought a bench-on-a-bench that he uses for detail work.

Matt Greco made a beautiful carpenters square out of scrap wood.

Matt Kestenbaum brought a prototype for a table with parabolic legs that he is in the process of designing.

Doug Poray demonstrated a way to easily find the center of a dowel.

Ray Ostrow showed some pens that he made for Steve Altman’s wife.

Jerry Van de Sande showed pictures of his “El Cheapo Roubo” that he made. The leg vise is made with a screw from a prohibition-era wine press that his family had.

Paul Dzioba showed some pictures from the recent Williamsburg conference.

Frank Lovero showed a gorgeous chair that he made with wood salvaged from the dumpster.

John Steinmetz demonstrated a very clever jig that his father made to sharpen scrapers.

And finally, Frank Vucolo brought a Federal accent table in progress.

September meeting: CNC techniques for woodworking

At the September CJWA meeting, Rainer Schmidt gave an interesting talk on CNC machinery and how it can be applied to woodworking, and how to put together your own CNC setup.  He brought in a small milling machine, a controller, and a computer with the software that controls the CNC process.  Although technical difficulties unfortunately didn’t allow him to demonstrate his setup, he was able to show how the process of designing a workpiece on a computer ultimately leads to the finished product.

David White also gave some insight about his experiences with CNC machinery in his woodworking, for both business and for himself.

Finally, Marc Gaertner showed a porch swing that he made.  Marc talked about the joinery involved, and about how challenging it was to precisely cut the joints for the back vertical stretcher pieces because of the curve of the top rail.  Because of the curve, every piece had to be individually fitted. 

 

April Meeting: Turning for Furniture Makers

The highlight of the April CJWA meeting was an excellent presentation by Tom Jones, president of the Atlantic Shore Woodturners woodturning club on how woodturning can be used for furniture projects. Tom was kind enough to bring his own lathe for this demonstration and was able to show a number of spindle turning techniques that could be used for furniture projects. Tom demonstrated the use of roughing gouges, spindle gouges, parting tools, and skew chisels to turn all the shapes and forms that can be used for furniture parts.

Tom had some good tips for turning for furniture projects.  He likes using a Sorby Stebcentre instead of a standard 4 prong drive center, as he thinks the Stebcentre gives more control over the holding of the workpiece. He said that spindle turning often will use higher speeds on the lathe compared to bowl turners, often in the 1800 rpm range. Good woods for turning tend to be harder, and fruit woods are very good for this purpose.

Here Tom shows how to use a caliper and parting tool to establish a specific measured diameter on a spindle piece.

And this is what not to do.

February Meeting: Steve Altman on Box Making

We started the meeting by welcoming two new visitors. Frank Vucolo, Simon Stark, and John Tamaino gave our final update for our booth at The Woodworking Show at the Garden State Exhibit Center in Somerset on Feb. 19-21. They really have done an excellent job organizing the displays and demos at our booth.  Here are some of the projects made by CJWA members that you will be able to see at the show:

Steve Altman gave an excellent presentation that was ostensibly about box making, but the talk wound up covering a wide and fascinating range of topics.  Steve touched on design considerations in making a box, methods of working with smaller pieces of wood, and modifying tools to suit your purpose.  He also showed how he cuts the lid for a box, examples made by famous box makers such as Peter Lloyd, Andrew Crawford, and Philip Weber, and even found time to run through a survey of glues.

The highlight of Steve’s talk was his run though of this jewelry case that he is in the process of finishing.  The jewelry case is made of pommele sapele, spalted maple, and ebony, and features a slide out section to hold necklaces, and a hidden cash box specified by Steve’s wife.

January Meeting: SketchUp for Woodworkers

We started off the first CJWA meeting of the decade with five new members at our meeting. Frank Vucolo presented an update on plans for our booth at The Woodworking Show at the Garden State Exhibit Center in Somerset on Feb. 19-21. Although we have had a booth at The Woodworking Show every year in the past, this will be our biggest effort yet. Not only will we be showing projects that CJWA members have made, there also will be a full slate of demonstrations by CJWA members throughout the show.

Elections were held for CJWA officers for 2010. The current officers were re-elected.

For this year, one project that CJWA will take on for the Old Brick Reformed Church will be to build some storage shelves for use in the storage area just off of our meeting room. Dave White and John Steinmetz will head up this project. Thanks, Dave and John!

Our featured speaker was Robert Lafferty of Blackpoint Woodworking, who gave a demonstration of how he uses Google SketchUp in planning projects. He was able to show how to mock up a kitchen cabinet layout using SketchUp, including dimensioning the carcasses, showing how to easily add decorative elements like crown molding, and adding grain patterns using Wood Workshop, a program that will add wood patterns to SketchUp objects.

In addition to creating SketchUp objects from scratch, there are many woodworking related SketchUp models uploaded by SketchUp users that are available on the internet. Popular Woodworking magazine has an extensive selection of SketchUp models related to articles from their magazine and related publications.

Roger Ackerman and Matt Greco also showed how they used SketchUp in their projects. Roger used SketchUp for planning and building a shed. Matt showed how he used SketchUp to facilitate getting client approval for projects, and showed how to use SketchUp to create a table.

Jerry Fishlin showed a Greene and Greene inspired small table made of white oak. The top was quartersawn white oak, and it was finished using Japan Colors, shellac, and wax. Hopefully he will bring it to exhibit at our booth at the Woodworking show.