Monthly Archives: July 2021

Newsletter Vol 36 / Issue 07

Greetings

Have you ever heard the phrase “And this too shall pass”? Well, that phrase is what I’m thankful for this month. It seems we’ve been going through more than our share of aches, pains, and doctor visits lately. So, we fall back on “This too shall pass.” Like Tennessee weather, if you don’t like it, just wait; it will change.

That frame of mind can help get us through some tough times, if we just hold on. But, like every coin, there are two sides. What if you’re going through good times? Unfortunately, “This too shall pass” still applies. So, appreciate the good times while they’re here.

I’ll wrap this up with a quote from Jake Hess – “No matter what you’re going through, it’s either going to get better, get worse, or stay about the same.”

Now let’s get started with Splinters!

 June Meeting

I really hated missing the first face to face meeting. I had worked in the garden for two days (it had been wet for two weeks.) I couldn’t move for a couple days. From all reports I’ve gotten, a good time was had by all.

LIVE/Zoom Meeting July 20

We will have our next meeting on Tuesday, July 20th from 6:30-8:30.  For the program Gary Runyon will demonstrate how he makes threaded needle boxes.

Please send pictures and information requested below to the email address below. This will save time getting pictures ready for Show & Tell.

By Sunday, July 18th – Provide pictures and descriptions of your Show & Tell items to tnvalleywoodworkers@gmail.com 
Descriptive information for each photo/related set of photos should include:

Woodworker Name: 
Project Name:
Wood(s)/Materials Used: 
Finishes applied:
Lessons Learned (if any): 

June Show & Tell

Here are the items that were shown in last month’s Live/Zoom meeting. 

Chris Sauder noted Mickey Knowles told him he needed to get a lathe.  So he did.  He showed some beautiful bowls made of Hackberry, Spalted Hackberry, Birch and Leland Cypress.   All were finished with sanding sealer.  He also showed a finished ukulele he made for one of the grandkids from a kit.  He inserts a penny in the headstock from the year of construction. He wood burns his initials on the back of the headstock.  The Ukulele was finished with a water-based stain hand hand-rubbed wax.

Karen Browning showed a Red Bud Vase with natural edges and features.  She finished it in 3 coats of water-based poly.  She also showed a turned tea-light candlestick of unknown, unfinished wood.

Gary Runyon showed a sample of the 20 turned and threaded needle boxes he made from hickory, pecan, bloodwood, mesquite, and bocote rosewood. He finished them with micro-crystalline shellac lacquer.  He showed interesting threaded Acorn Shaped Boxes with dogwood bases and textured cherry tops finished with Doctor’s Woodshop Walnut Oil and Microcrystal Paste Wax.  He also showed an example of the 9 storage boxes he made from a variety of cherry, oak and walnut and finished with MinWax Antique Oil.  Gary also showed a Tansu Style Box he made with Ambrosia Maple using a woodworking plan.  Gary has made several of these interesting storage boxes. He finished the Tansu style box with MinWax Antique Oil.

Darrel Albert showed three pieces made from Chittum Burl and finished in walnut oil.  The two “ladle” type pieces were made from a tree that had 42 burls on it!  The burl dish came from a chittum stump. (Pic1, Pic2, Pic3)

Geoff Roehm showed a handy router jig for cutting accurate scarf joints for guitar necks.

Pete Miller sent pictures of watercolor painting tracings he did June 6th. One will stay black and white and Pete will add will add flesh tones, fingernail color and do the robe on the other. He used a design that he traced on the paper for the painting. He is not free-handing this stuff yet like real artists do. He has two on-line courses to do to learn how to good watercolor paintings. Pete wanted to do painting as one of the club members at the spoon carving workshop said it would enhance his wood burnings. COVID and a Christmas gift gave him the chance to try painting on paper and wood.

Loyd Ackerman showed a great variety of the work he produced over the pandemic period.  He showed a variety of wood turnings he made during 2020-2021.  He showed a walnut serving tray he made in Nov 20.  In Oct 20, Loyd made a bean bag toss (aka corn hole) game for his son who is an avid Alabama fan.  He made a sofa table out of cherry for his daughter in Aug 20.  He made a walnut and poplar side table.  He noted the poplar choice was because he ran out of walnut.  He glazed/finished/repeated the poplar to match the walnut and felt over many iterations the wood colors matched well.  He showed a custom child study desk built in Dec 20 to his 9-year-old granddaughter’s specification to support her remote learning.  The desk is made of maple with a lacquer finish. He also showed a butler’s tray.

Darren Earle showed some lumber he’s been milling since retiring from his previous profession and buying a portable saw mill.  He showed some large slabs of ash he milled and then cut into bowl blanks.  The ash tree was over 250 years old and the “limb” was 29” in diameter!  The limb had fallen off but the tree was still standing and the State Arborist came out to document the tree (after some coaxing…).  Darren showed some raised garden bed boxes he made for his wife.  The bottoms were made from black locust and the sides from red cedar. (Pic1, Pic2)  He told of a lady who had a log cabin and tobacco barn on her property who wanted a mantle for the cabin’s fireplace.  She asked for walnut but Darren suggested that she use some of the American Chestnut logs loose on the porch as it would match the cabin.  She agreed.  He took a log home and milled it and noticed it was not American Chestnut, but Poplar! The difference in this poplar log was that it had over 130 growth rings in the slab!  He did some research and noted poplar used to grow very slowly.  One can’t find that type of poplar anymore.  His final pictures were of a maple burl in raw form and the burl on the lathe.  He noted that the “bumps” in the burl were made from mistletoe “haustorium” that grows between the maple cells to attach itself and nourish itself by siphoning off some of the maple tree’s water.  The mistletoe does not hurt the tree.  It does provide very interesting effects on the maple burl.

Jim Jolliffe showed a finished cottonwood bark carving of a native American in a wolf headdress that he had sprayed with three coats of rattle can lacquer then added acrylic highlights.  Once highlighted, he sprayed with matte lacquer and applied Watco’s Liquid Wax (natural color) and buffed it out. (Pic1, Pic2, Pic3)

John Hartin showed two magnolia bowls he had turned. (Pic1, Pic2)

Internet Links of Interest

This is not a woodworking link but may be of interest to any computer wannabees. In the course of compiling the newsletter, I had to extract pictures from the PowerPoint Jim sent me. The tedious way is one by one. But at the site below there’s a video that explains how to extract them all at once. Huge time saver.

https://puffingston.com/blog/extract-images-powerpoint-insertion-prezi-digital-resources/

From WOOD Magazine-
A video showing the differences between red and white oak. And why one is better than the other for outdoor projects.
https://www.woodmagazine.com/video/red-vs-white-oak 

Carver’s Corner

The Splinter Carvers continue to meet first and third Saturdays of the month from 8:30 am to 10:30 am (whether Jim’s there or not).  The shop is located at 201 Jolliffe Acres Ln, Tullahoma. Tools and wood are available at the meetings, just bring yourself and try your hand at carving!

Sweeping Up

From Pinterest:

Submissions to the newsletter are more than welcomed. Send funnies, tips, or other content that may be of interest and you may see it in a future edition of SPLINTERS.