President’s Turn 2026-03

NMWT Members,

We are a quarter of the way through 2026. Can you believe it? It seems like time passes more swiftly with the passing of each year. And given that three of the four elected officers are on their second term, we need to start looking for officer candidates for the 2027 calendar year. If you have any interest in helping out your club, please talk with Tom Durgin (the past president and election committee chair) or any other board member. We would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Note that at the January board meeting, the board passed a motion to bring in Emily Ford to demonstrate at the June 6th club meeting and to lead up to four workshops held on consecutive days starting June 7th. A demonstration topic has yet to be set, so if you are familiar with her offerings, please give your suggestions to Alex as soon as possible. Currently the fee for attending one of her workshops will be $150.00 plus the cost of wood. As we do not have a topic yet, we cannot yet estimate the cost of wood.

The JCH turning events continue with the February presentation of turning finials by Rex Funk. Once again, we had approximately seventeen participants, and given that we only have six lathes, I am pleased with the level of participation. The March turning event will actually be on the weekend BEFORE the March club meeting on February 28th. As of this writing, it has yet to occur, so I cannot comment on the attendance. Hy Tran and Scott Eckstein will present basic lathe maintenance and safety using the club’s Laguna lathes as Guinnea pigs.

And as a final note for this edition, we have cleared out our storage unit and closed our contract. This will save the club $215.00 per month. We also canceled our Zoom account, but it is still active until October as we pay for that annually. Constant Contact cancellation is quite difficult, and it is still in the works. The old website should be redirected to the new website by the time this is published.

That’s it for now. Hope to see you at the March 7th meeting.

Mark