President’s Turn 25-09
Sorry for the length of this month’s submission, but it’s been a busy month. First off, the New Mexico Woodturners annual training class was held at DendroTechnology over the past three Saturdays. Michael Mocho’s skill development class was fully attended, and all participants seemed to benefit from the training and practice. We are planning on holding another three-day class, but no set subject matter or dates have been set. See me if you have any suggestions or requests.
The second NMWT/WIT wig stand turning event took place at DendroTechnology on August 17th. Turnout was disappointingly small as a number of previous participants were out of town, but some wig stands were added to the collection to be distributed to UNM cancer patients. These wig stands are greatly appreciated by all those associated with this program. It is very sad to know that the need is so great, so every wig stand that we can produce is greatly appreciated.
I had lunch with Tom McLarty and Fred (Alfredo) Franco to work out the details that would allow NMWT to store our lathes, toolboxes, tool roles, and trailer at JCH (James Cooke & Hobson, Inc.) This is the large facility that hosted the first NMWT/WIT wig stand turning event. Housing our equipment at JCH will allow much more frequent club-sponsored turning and educational events. A great THANK YOU is due to Tom McLarty for suggesting the idea and making it happen.
Once the state fair is behind us, I would like to see us hosting at least one event per month. Please see me if you have any suggestions or requests for an event subject. At this time, I envision hosting a sharpening clinic and a tool handle clinic (in support of the September demonstration topic: Shop-made tools).
And on that note, the September club meeting: Shop-made tools will be presented by John Spitzenberger, Patricia Apt, Michael Mocho, Mark Miller, and Ray Davis. If you have any shop-made tools, please bring them to the meeting and share your experiences. We envision a format similar to that used in the Shop made Jigs demonstration during our January monthly meeting.
Per the encouragement of Rex Funk, on August 20th the club held an alligator juniper harvesting trip to the San Mateo mountains southwest of Socorro. We obtained two permits; each one allows up to two people to cut dead wood totaling 10 cords. We did not collect anywhere near this much, so a return trip is possible, but not currently scheduled. The permits are good until February 2026. Please see his article in this newsletter for more details.
And finally, I am putting out a call for input/assistance: In the near future we are hoping to move off our current webhost and cobbled-together collection of tools to a single unified environment. If you have any experience with web hosting, payment processing, scheduling, and maintaining membership databases, your club needs your input. Please see me at the September meeting or contact me by phone (505 350-8584) or email (MarkLMiller1956@gmail.com). I welcome your experiences; both positive and negative.
See you there,
Mark, President NMWT
