Another Good Club Night May 2008

Paul explains

Paul's interesting gallery

Winged candle holder finished

An interesting night tonight, loads of new members asking all sorts of questions, most importantly about the tuition at John Davis's workshop, very popular event that is. Plus JC and I were doing the tea/coffee and we thought we'd have a bit of fun with it, so we wore clean white shirts, I had a bow tie and JC sported a lovely satin Blue number, it went down very well with lots of remarks as you can imagine, mostly about the creases in my shirt, which got even more laughs when I said I didn't own a white shirt and to take it up with my son!

Its all about tweaking things once in a while to make it different, it'll be interesting to see if anybody else comes up with anything new for doing the refreshments as we did, so there's a challenge laid down for you Forest members. Sorry but no pictures!

The evening got very busy about 7pm as usual, lots of tea and coffee, our guest turner and his wife were taken refreshments by a smartly dressed waiter, tray and napkin over the arm as you would expect from the best restaurant in town, the lathe was set up and the guest's gallery was displayed at the far end of the hall.

Don opened the meeting and very soon we were introduced to Paul Reeves, Paul is from Christchurch Woodturners and is well know by a number of our members. His gallery items were very impressive, a good range of different ideas and finishes. Paul's demo showed what could be achieved with a piece of branch wood, a winged bowl, candle holder or box probably best describes the piece.

I think the emphasis was on what you could do with the edge which was a fresh idea to this project, but care and attention to those areas you can't see when it's turning. He had a number of finished one's showing the various aspects of design. There were the usual questions and answers which showed good interest from the members, and Paul got a good round of applause when Don thanked him for his demonstration.

There where 16 items on the club gallery table tonight which is very encouraging and 13 entries in the competition and all good quality to. We had 70 members here tonight and I'm pleased to see a lot of passing on of technical help or materials. We had the usual mid evening break, JC and I were kept busy and loads of chat between the members. Trevor drew the raffle and the hall was cleared. So with everything back where it belongs it was lights out and lock the doors, and there goes another good club night.