This page is meant to provide some of the woodworking content that gets presented at our Monthly Meetings, or created elsewhere by one of our Members, Guest Speakers, or others in the wood crafts community.
2016
The Guild is still active
While this Content page hasn't had new woodworking additions in quite awhile, rest assured the Guild is still active and meeting on a regular basis. The webmaster/woodworker who maintains this site hasn't been active in the club for awhile, but all the Contact info is current.
20 Mar 2011
A Concise History of Early American Furniture
While searching around for info on typical characteristics of William & Mary furniture, I stumbled upon this site: Artisans of the Valley, Educational Services. At the bottom of that page is a link to a PDF of a presentation they've created that shows photographic examples of period furniture, with written text describing typical characteristics. It is 138 pages, and just over 3MB in size.
04 Jan 2011
An Heirloom Quality Chinese Checkers Board
At the December 2010 meeting, our Bill Langtry gave a presentation on the high precision methods he used to build a beautiful Chinese Checkers board for a client. Here are his presentation slides in PDF format. It is a large file, about 3.5MB.
12 Nov 2010
New Edition of FPL's "Wood Handbook"
I recently read an update on Popular Woodworking Magazine's editor's blog that a new edition (11 years since the last) of the Forest Products Laboratory's highly-regarded "Wood Handbook" is now available online as a pdf download. That blog is worth a read, as it gives a bit of history about the FPL (this is its Centennial year) and this publication. If you just want the PDF - all 15MB of it - click here. If you follow another link provided in the PWM blog, it takes you to a Forest Service webpage where you could also choose to download specific chapters.
11 Mar 2010
"5S" your workshop
This link at Highland Woodworking's website was sent to me by fellow member Mike Spanbauer. According to the article, "5S" is a component of what's called Lean Manufacturing (wiki link), but here it's proposed as a way to, well, get your shop in order. An interesting read for the hobbiest or professional alike: 5S Your Shop.
09 Mar 2010
"There is no bad wood."
Imagine building a successful furniture career over multiple decades using only domestic species of wood. Seem limiting? Not to hear Hank Gilpin tell it. In this 5 minute 26 second audio slide show, you'll hear him talk about that. I found the last 1:30 even more fascinating with his attitude of - and results with! - "no bad wood."
03 Mar 2010
The Guild's newsletter for February 2010 is available in PDF format.
Our guest speaker last night, Max Hunter of Western Dovetail, presented among other things the well-built "utility" cabinet his business Drawers On Wheels is producing. He had some printouts of an article he wrote for Extreme How-To on its construction, and you can view that article online here at their website. Max will be sending a PDF to host on our website, and I'll link that here when I get it.
02 Feb 2010
A regular contributor to the Handtools section of the Woodnet Forums posted a well-photographed, and crisply annotated tutorial / demonstration of doing handcut dovetails. His work speaks for itself, and those interested in learning this skill I think will find great value in it. http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Furniture/MakingBetter%20Dovetails.html
01 Feb 2010
Besides the great presentation on Art Nouveau that Joe Von Arx put together and presented to the Guild at the January meeting, he also wrote-up some thoughts on how others might go about organizing their own presentation to the group. Take a look at this document from Joe (PDF format).
01 Feb 2010
The Guild's newsletter for January 2010 is available in PDF format.
06 Jan 2010
The Guild's newsletter for December is available in PDF format.
04 Jan 2010
Check out this video from Popular Woodworking showing Glen Huey putting a taper on a leg in two passes at the jointer. Member Chris Somers has tried it, and will bring an example to the January meeting. www.popularwoodworking.com/article/jointer_to_taper_legs
01 Dec 2009
As part of Show-n-Tell at tonight's Guild meeting, Chris Somers brought a laptop, hooked up to the big screen TV, and launched Google's Sketchup 7.1 (download the free version at the bottom/right). He showed the model/plans he created for his kids' draw-leaf table (a precursor for a draw-leaf dining room table for his wife). This was hist 1st time really using Sketchup, and he learned everything necessary for this project from a series of tutorials at the website www.sketchupforwoodworkers.com - highly recommended!
Once you have Sketchup 7 installed, you can download and view Chris' plans.
29 Nov 2009
The Guild's newsletter for November is available in PDF format.
29 Nov 2009
What is a Guild, exactly? It seems a bit too fancy a word to apply to our somewhat motley group of woodworkers. The fact is, it had a very specific connotation not too long ago, and with a history reaching back centuries. Lee Valley has published in their November Woodworking Newsletter (opens in new window/tab) a focus piece on a modern embodiment of this formal membership. An interesting read in itself, and maybe some ideas for the growth of our group.
09 Jun 2009
Studio Furniture. You may not know what it really means, and for many it conjures images of "arty" pieces that are barely functional, and often made of materials other than wood. Well, now you can really educate yourself at the website of Pritam & Eames. And you just may be surprised, fascinated, inspired and energized by what you see and read. They have put in the Archives section of their site (www.pritameames.com/archives.html) two links that are each a retrospective of a decade of furniture and designers that have come through their doors, 1981-91, and 1991-2001. The sheer volume of photos (some of which are links to larger versions) and accompanying text may just require a printout and sit-down with a drink. (May not be suitable for dial-up access).
14 May 2009
The first piece to be posted here was organized and presented by our very own Chris Somers. In January, he started down the path of teaching himself how to cut dovetail joints by hand; he brought the story of his effort - and 18 completed joints - to the February Show-n-Tell, and it turned out plenty of folks were interested in seeing more. So, Chris put together this presentation, along with a live demo, for the May meeting.
Technical Note: The presentation is HTML that was generated from Microsoft Powerpoint. It works well in Internet Explorer 6.x (and presumably more recent versions.) For Firefox 3.x, you can get an Add-On to change the rendering engine to IE, and then it will also work well (follow this link). It has not been tried in other browsers. If you are unable to view it, you can download the Microsoft Powerpoint presentation directly to your computer by clicking this link.