Mark's Musings

Mark Bronkalla

October Meeting

Ken Bahr did an excellent presentation on the construction of a round side table. The top had been started in the last Bill Hull veneering workshop. The top was an 8 way radial match of walnut veneer.

Making a round table with a round apron is something most of us have never attempted. Ken covered not just the techniques used, but also the construction of the many jigs that he made for the project. I think he ended up spending as much time on the jigs as on the table proper, but now has some nice tool accessories to use for other projects as well.

Logfest

We had a great day for Log Fest. The weather was perfect.
Those that came early had a chance to see the sawing in action.

Refreshments were available from “Yezek Catering” Dick and Kathy brought a nice selection of snacks and drinks.

For the auction John McAlpin  and George Hendersen did tag team auctioning with each doing a number of layers of wood on the stacks and then the other taking over. John did a great job explaining why a particular batch of wood was a great or not so great buy.  George really warmed up to the role of auctioneer.

We had a great bunch of volunteers hauling the wood over to each purchaser’s piles. We had each buyers area marked by a flag. Each buyer also had a page in the tally book. This made sign out and payment nice and easy.  The level of helpfulness and cooperation was really great. We were able to get each lot of wood tallied and carried off while the auctioneer sized up the next lot and started his pitch.

At about 4PM we stopped the auction, to allow people to load up and pay.

At this point we still have about 1/2 of the wood left (about 3000 bd ft). This leads to our upcoming November Lumber Auction. This auction will be on November 13th, starting at 10 AM. According to the sawing crew, the best lumber is still in the stacks we have left. In these stacks we have: White and Red Oak, Walnut, Cherry, Elm and Ash. Well over half of the wood we have is quarter or rift sawn. The boards are beautiful and a much larger percentage of the boards are edge trimmed.

One change for the auction will be that we would like to have the boards for each lot lifted up and stood in front of the pile to give the crowd a better look.  For me it was hard to predict what each lot would sell for, but it does seem that the pieces that were most visible, sold for the most (all else equal).

We will also have saws available to allow the buyers to cut their pieces shorter for transport if necessary.  A number of prospective bidders were put off by the long boards. I picked up a number of the long ones and they were interesting to transport home.


Guild staffing

We are still looking for members to fill the positions of President and Secretary.  Now is your chance to step forward and take an active role in running the guild. We need more members to be active to help drive the guild and to bring in new ideas and viewpoints.

The Secretary takes care of our filings with the state, insurance and the meeting minutes as the most significant tasks.

The President has the more visible role due to running the meetings. In practice, the president gets a lot of guidance from the rest of the board. The board meetings are a fun part of being on the board in any of the positions. The president’s role for these meetings is largely to keep the meeting on track.

Mary Andersen has stepped up to be the new Toy Chair Lady. Mary will still be doing the membership work as well.

In the shop

Logfest was a highpoint of the month for me and also a source of some of the shop time. I had to move last year’s wood from the shed to the shop and find room for more wood in my shop. This provided an interesting chance to look over last year’s purchases and I am really pleased with the results. The cherry is dry and ready for use, the Ash boards are nearly dry and should be ready for use later this winter. The white cedar has been ready for some time now (amazing how light it got).

It took 3 trips to get all of my lumber home from Logfest. No mishaps along the way, although the last load was a bit slow going, my trailer did not like going over 40-45 mph without wobbling side to side.  I must have had the weight a bit too far toward the rear. It was a bit hard to properly balance 12 to 16 foot  boards on an 8 foot trailer. We now have it all stacked and stickered in the shed. Looking over the wood again, I am still very  pleased with my purchases. Some of the pieces are quite spectacular.

I recently picked up a Stanley 45 plane via Ebay. The plane was reasonably priced as it had a lot of light surface rust. Once I received it, I really did not want to go after it with Naval Jelly. I had read about using electrolysis to convert and remove the rust. This was  now was the time to try it out.

With electrolysis, you need a few simple items - plastic bucket, warm water, washing soda (sodium carbonate), a donor steel or iron electrode, some steel or iron wire and a battery charger. The donor electrode is connected to the positive terminal of the charger. The solution of water and soda is 1 Tablespoon of washing soda to 1 gallon of water.   I rigged it up with a donor chunk of angle iron and tried the electrolysis on one of the blades / plane irons. The wire is simply wrapped a few times around the part , connected to the negative terminal of the charger and then the part is dangled in the solution. It converted the rust and it cleaned up quite easily. I then took the plunge and started on the larger parts.

The plane is now cleaned up and the blades are sharpened.  The rust pitting on the blades was not as bad as I had expected and they flattened out nicely with no trace of rust pitting near the edges. I did some practice runs cutting beads and it works very well. Using a plane is a nice change from using a router. In many ways, I like using a plane or scratch stock better for making beads, when compared to a router.

For more information on electrolysis see:
http://www.davidbradley.net/ERR.html
http://www.rowand.net/Shop/Tech/Electrolysis.htm
http://www.alphalink.com.au/~petero/rustconverter.html


Program

For current calendar information see:
http://wiscwoodworkersguild.org/cgi-bin/eventcalendar.cgi


Board Briefs

BOARD BRIEFS

BOARD of DIRECTORS MEETING MINUTES for OCT. 14, 2004; 7:00-9:00p.m.

Location: United Church of Christ, 4240 N. 78th Street, Milwaukee

Present: Mary Anderson, Ken Bahr, Mark Bronkalla, Leila Crandall-Frink, Jerry Kashmerick, Jeff Nebel, Dick Yezek

Vice-president: Dick distributed the latest event sign-up sheets.  The top turning workshop will be cancelled.  The Marc Adams workshop on Marquetry and Parquetry will be held.  The Workbench workshop to be run by Jerry Tackes needs a date

Logfest: The event brought in revenue of $2,213.00 so far.  There were fewer people than last year.  An additional auction for the remaining wood was scheduled for November 13 at 10:00 a.m.  Mark will include the types of wood still for sale in his column.

Programs/Workshops:  Ken discussed several ideas for future meeting topics, including one on “oops” committed by members and how they resolved them.  Germanfest will invite the Guild back for 2005; a larger tent is in the works.

Publications: Mary reports the Publications Committee has been asked to include an expiration date on the membership cards.  The trifolds will be made more generic to skirt the problem of changing programs and so they can be used for more than one year.

Exhibits: Jerry reported the Hales Corners library will have an exhibit.

Toy Program: Mary suggested she will begin the 2005 toy promotion in July.  Two toy workshops will be held.  She also suggested that we avoid counting the toys so it is not a competition.

Respectfully submitted, Jeffrey M. Nebel, Secretary

Raffle

Alan Clapp

The winners of the October raffle were Bill Drumel and Alan Valente.
 
The November raffle prize is a Grizzly 6 inch bench grinder.  Coarse and fine aluminum oxide grinding wheels and wheel shields are included.


Year End Raffle

The year end raffle is a Bosch model 3912 12" Compound Miter Saw. The saw is complete with 40-tooth blade, dust bag and hold down clamp.
Tickets will be available for $5 each at the Fall Guild meetings and at the holiday party.

Reflections

LOGFEST 2004

by Leila Crandall-Frink

   It was the nicest day of the fall when 50+ WWG members and guests met for Logfest 2004.  It could not have been a better day, with sunshine so warm you finally had to take off your jacket.  We had some really nice snacks thanks to Dick & Kathy Yezek. 

   The Logfest started with a demonstration of the sawing of the logs.  Then John McAlpin and George Henderson took turns being the auctioneer. We had lots of stacks of wood.  And some leaning against the fence.  Oak and Ash were in abundance, with some boards of Walnut and Cedar. And a little friendly competition was enjoyed for some very nice pieces of wood.

   The planks were put in stacks for the buyers so they could easily load them into waiting trucks and trailers.  And imagine the upcoming projects! Tom Shuppe will be making one VERY nice deck of White Oak.  Who knows what Mark Bronkalla will be making, but he will have no lack of wood choices to do it with.  Let’s see, one gent says he will be married for only another month or so, at least once his wife finds out how much money he really spent on wood.  Others were going to be doing some beautiful wood turnings, some nice band saw boxes, at least one or two tables with bookmarked tops, and great cabinet fronts. 

   And there is more wood to be had.  The auction was finally called to a halt at 3:30 PM when those present were losing interest and had spent all the money they had available.  And there were at least two stacks of lumber still available to auction.  The auction of the remainder of the wood was tentatively scheduled for November 13th.  Better plan to be early to get good deals.


Walnut Circular Table

by Si Farmer


  At the last Guild  meeting, Ken Bahr,  Program and Workshop Director, presented to the membership his joy and challenge of making a beautiful one-of-a-kind (so far) circular table. He previously had made a 24 inch diameter walnut- veneered table top at the Bill Hull Veneering Workshop, and was determined to build a custom designed table for his family.
 He started the process by determining the intended usage, and from that he chose a conservative style with simple turnings on the legs, curved apron and a pie-crust edge. All of the table was done in walnut, with the exception of the top which was walnut-veneered MDF.
  Ken quickly realized that a circular table presented special and unique challenges. To illustrate his challenge, he started out with a full-scale layout with detailed drawings. And he quickly discovered that he needed jigs and fixtures for he curved elements that were not commercially available.
 A large portion of his presentation dealt with the various jigs that were required to fabricate the table; re-saw fence for his Craftsman bandsaw, miter fence, compass, circle-cutting jig, clot cutter and camping jig. He also needed the ability to route the inside of the table top edge so he modified  a router base to the bearing was on the outside of the top and the cutter was inside!
  The various jigs functioned excellently for their intended use and are ready to do production work for the next dozen or so identical tables.
  Ken finished his table with shellac, both brushed and sprayed. He used stained garnet shellac to darken the walnut. (And it was quite dark!) He rubbed out the table with pumise and rottentone.
   The tremendous effort that Ken put into the making of his table, via jigs and fixtures design and manufacture, causes me to invoke the need for the well known axiom, “Give a lazy man a hard job and he’ll find an easy way to do it”. Ken, you were not lazy enough.
  Thanx Ken, for an interesting and informative program presentation on the design and fabrication of your beautiful walnut circular table.