Capital Area Woodturners

CAW Holiday Party

Mark your calendars for Saturday evening, December 09, 2006, to reserve it for the CAW pot luck Holiday Social. 

Sharing Holiday Cheer!!

Capital Area Woodturners 4th annual Woodturners Ball on Saturday evening, December 09th, in the church hall of the Messiah United Methodist Church Hall, 6125 Rolling Road, Springfield, VA  22152.  Our goal is simple:  Let's all get together during this holiday season to share some holiday cheer with the members, families, and friends of CAW; eat a hearty meal of whatever dishes walk through the door; vote for the best turned holiday ornament from the members' entries; and exchange a turned object for those participating in the grab-bag exchange.

3:30 PM - Setup - If you have some free time and want to help setup, please contact Tom Boley, 703-569-2548, to coordinate activities to help with.

5:00 PM - Social Hour - Fun, camaraderie, hors d'oeuvres, soft drinks, and inspecting the items entered in the ornament contest and the turning exchange.   

6:00 PM - Dinner - Really great food prepared by your friends, fellow woodturners, and/or their spouses.  Pot luck dinners are the best eating anywhere.  Drinks and eating utensils will be provided by the CAW.

7:00 PM - Fun & Games - Vote for your favorite ornament and grab-bag entry; dance with someone; sing some holiday carols; renew old acquaintances and make new ones; talk about turning, or just come and have some fun!!

Program for the month: 8:30am - Hands-on skill enhancement. Members sharing their experiences and helping each other with turning problems, sharpening tips, chucking advice, or just practice.
9:30 - Chapter business meeting with show notices, activity announcements, and Show & Tell. Bring in your recent turnings and share with us what you've learned!
10:00 - Trent Bosch

$5 Demo fee will be collected.

Program for the month: 8:30am - Hands-on skill enhancement. Members sharing their experiences and helping each other with turning problems, sharpening tips, chucking advice, or just practice.
9:30 - Chapter business meeting with show notices, activity announcements, and Show & Tell. Bring in your recent turnings and share with us what you've learned!
10:00 - Michael Mocho - has been a full-time craftsman since 1976 with extensive experience in furniture design, sculpture, pattern making, and stringed musical instruments. He was also Artist-in-Residence at Arrowmont, and at the 2004 International Turning Exchange residency at the Woodturning Center in Philadelphia.  He has taught at Arrowmont School of Craft, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, the National Woodturning Symposium, and many local AAW chapters.  He operates a small shop and teaches furniture making, guitar making, and woodturning at the Santa Fe Community College in New Mexico.

Michael is quite versatile and here is a sampling of what we may see:

• Effective Spindle Turning: roughing, cutting cylinders, beads, coves, fillets, tapers
• Learning to Love the Skew – straightforward tips to help you understand and enjoy the virtues of this versatile yet frequently maligned tool
• On-Lathe Textural Techniques: chatter work, indexed embossing, spiraling, and other textures can add contrast and visual interest to your work
• Boxes & Lidded Containers: simple to complex - piston fit, friction fit, snap fit
• Turning Miniatures – making and using small scale tools for diameters under 3/4”
• Making Connections: quick methods for making accurate tenons / exploring component turnings. Includes information about accurate drilling on the lathe: center drilling, indexed drilling, deep drilling
• Hand-Chased threading- tips for fast and effective thread cutting
• Shear Scraping Techniques - for both spindle and side grain forms. Learn how to get smooth
  surfaces regardless of wood figure or grain direction
• Refining Bowl Gouge Skills- techniques for effective rough out, shape refinement, and tear-out free surfaces
• Altered Turnings: carving and abrasive shaping methods for discovering interesting new forms based on revealing cross section
• Hollowing Techniques: using bent tools and laser guided hollowing systems
• Multi-Axis Work: for both faceplate and between centers
• Understanding Wood - cutting & seasoning characteristics, hygroscopic movement
• Effective Sanding Strategies – reducing your surface preparation time
• Refining Sharpening Skills- grinding & honing- both free hand and with jigs
• Tool Making: design, metalwork & handles, inexpensive bent hollowing tools with HSS tips, scrapers specialty tools
• Design Development for Turned Work: drawing and design strategies, developing your imagination
• Production Strategies for Series Work - effective layout, sequence, set up and tool selection

$5 Demo fee will be collected.

Program for the month: 8:30am - Hands-on skill enhancement. Members sharing their experiences and helping each other with turning problems, sharpening tips, chucking advice, or just practice.
9:30 - Chapter business meeting with show notices, activity announcements, and Show & Tell. Bring in your recent turnings and share with us what you've learned!
10:00 Johannes Michaelson - Turning full size cowboy hats.

$5 Demo fee will be collected.

Program for the month: 8:30am - ands-on skill enhancement. Members sharing their experiences and helping each other with turning problems, sharpening tips, chucking advice, or just practice.
9:30 - Chapter business meeting with show notices, activity announcements, and Show & Tell. Bring in your recent turnings and share with us what you've learned!
10:00 -  Matt Birchfield - Cover all aspects of turning a lampshade, from log selection to finishing techniques and mounting the shade on a lamp.  During the process he will use some tools you may not be familiar with, some that he makes himself, and some tools you’ve used before, but probably not in the same ways Matt uses them to achieve wall thicknesses of less than 3/32" using light as a gauge. You’ll be amazed to learn how fast you can "gut a log" with Matt’s hollowing tools and how smooth a surface you can achieve on wet wood without touching a piece of sandpaper. At the end of the demo when the lights go out, you’ll want to give it a try.

Program for the month: 8:30am - Hands-on skill enhancement. Members sharing their experiences and helping each other with turning problems, sharpening tips, chucking advice, or just practice.
9:30 - Chapter business meeting with show notices, activity announcements, and Show & Tell. Bring in your recent turnings and share with us what you've learned!
10:00 - Michael Mocho - Texturing mini hollow forms. 

$5 Demo fee will be collected.

Program for the month: 8:30am - Hands-on skill enhancement. Members sharing their experiences and helping each other with turning problems, sharpening tips, chucking advice, or just practice.
9:30 - Chapter business meeting with show notices, activity announcements, and Show & Tell. Bring in your recent turnings and share with us what you've learned!
10:00 - Don Derry - Coloring hollow forms.

  Donald has been a woodworker for 35 years and has made everything from fine furniture and cabinetry to rock and roll guitars. In 1993 Don and his wife Kathy adopted a baby girl and made the decision for Donald to change his job status from cabinetmaker to full time stay at home dad. Fatherhood gave Donald time to reconsider his career and go into Woodturning. Donald states, "Turning appealed to me because it isn't dependent on the cutting, fitting and endless measuring that my cabinetmaking required." So in 1993 he began in earnest to teach himself the craft of woodturning. His interest in color was initiated do to an observation which he made at an American
Association of Woodturners symposium in '94. A highlight of the symposium was an instant gallery containing several hundred turnings by amateurs and professionals alike. When he viewed the gallery he asked one question," What do I not see represented in this exhibition?" Donald noticed that vibrant color and optical quality finishing were two attributes being neglected by modern woodturners and he set out to exploit both to the highest standard of optical brilliance possible. So successful was his quest that his work is, more often than not, thought to be Fine Art Glass rather than finely crafted wood.

Presently Donald is working in Chinese elm because the open grain structure and neutral wood tone lends well to the coloring process he is developing. The colors are pigments from an industrial paint supplier and aniline dyes. The pigments are hand rubbed into the unfinished wood, sanded to the appropriate contrast, blended with solvent and sometimes enhanced by air brushing.  Each hollow form is then sprayed with 7 to 10 coats of water white lacquer followed by a 6 step and very intense hand polishing routine until the surface is optically perfect. To give a perspective on the whole process Donald states that, "Coloring, finishing and polishing easily takes more time
than the woodturning.


Donald has been a woodworker for the past 35 years however, he has only been a woodturner since 1994. “I started wood turning because I needed a change from the endless cutting, fitting and measuring that had made up the rest of my woodworking experience. The craft fair circuit made up the first part of his professional woodturning career. He sold pen and pencil sets, turned boxes and even some earrings.  But his bread and butter product turned out to be Christmas ornaments. He had several styles all based on the same basic techniques and sold almost
500 per year. In the summer of 1999 his career took a major shift in direction. Don quit doing craft fairs to
focus totally on artistic studio wood turning. This has become a full-time obsession and he is now known for
turning large state of the art hollow form vessels and sculptures that are brightly colored and polished to such a high luster that they are often mistaken to be made of fine art glass rather than wood. Interestingly, the techniques he taught himself as a craftsman doing Christmas ornaments continue to serve him well as an artist. Donald states, “About the only thing that has changed is the size of the lathe, the tools and of course the wood which is much heaver to lift.  The pictures on the next page show us some of the surprises we are in for with Don’s demonstration.

Program for the month:  

7:30 AM Help set up for the demonstrations. Help get the coffee bar going or have a cup of coffee and a donut with your fellow turners. Talk tips and techniques with others. (Note the early opening. Help is needed to assist in demonstration setup. Please arrive early and assist.)

9:00 AM A normal business meeting. A raffle will not be offered. Photos of member items will not be taken for the next CAW Newsletter. The tape library will be open. A silent auction table will not be available during the meeting.

9:30 AM - 3:00 See Symposium schedule.

This year’s Mini Symposium will be a series of demonstrations lasting 2 hours each. We hope you will find it enjoyable and full of learning opportunities. We will continue our tradition of having skilled demonstrators showing us their techniques, specialties and tricks. If you have attended our prior symposiums you know that in 1 1/2 hours you are able to gain insight into some topics and techniques that you may wish to pursue at a later date, so the 2 hour demos this year will be even more informative. On page 4 you will find the rotation schedule, which outlines the day of demonstrations and when each will be occurring. As always lunch is provided by the Club free of charge.