Matt's hand-on workshop will be at Rick Stone's, 5704 Montpelier Dr., Bartlett, TN 38134. Matt's workshop will be on using the skew. This will be a long morning session so plan on a late lunch. Contact Rick Stone for additional details at (901) 553-0853. There are limited openings so make your reservation ASAP. The cost of the workshop has not been finalized by the MSWG board of directors. I can tell you it will be $125 or less, but again - the price has not been finalized. An example of Matt's skew workshop can be seen in the YouTube video below.

Matt Monaco will be demonstrating his signature bowl at our meeting on April 23, 2022 (In-Person at Bartlett Station Municipal Center) starting at 9AM. Be sure to plan on returning after lunch for the afternoon session. You may recall the excellent demonstration by Matt at our 2019 Octoberfest - those photos are below:

Emmett Manley is a longtime member of MSWG and AAW. He is a retired medical scientist/professor who got hooked on woodturning in 2005. He enjoys studying and collecting wood native to western Tennessee and turning that wood into useful items. But did you know that starting in 2009 Emmett authored over 100 articles that were featured in Turners Talk or American Association of Woodturners' publications? Samples of his authored articles can be viewed by clicking on the following images. To see an index of most of Emmett's woodturning related articles, use this link: The Midsouth Woodturners Guild Then select the subpage under Resources & Doc or click the photo below.

On Sunday February 27th a Hands-On Workshop was held at Rick Stone's Shop. Two projects were offered to the participants. The first was a 7-1/2" diameter cherry disc to carve 3-D Leaves on. The second was a 4" square cherry tile. (See photos of projects carved by Sammy.) Cherry Disc w/ 3 leaves Sample Tiles #1 Sample Tiles #2 Participants used high speed rotary carvers and each workstation had high speed carving bits, sandbag to hold their piece while carving, templet materials, copies of leaves to trace, an exact-o knife, & pencil to trace pattern on their blank canvas (wood). The following is a pictorial primer on the process. ONE - Layout leaf pattern on the wood canvas to be carved. Bob Hobbs & Bill Smith working on leaves template TWO - Trace the leaves on the wood canvas Kirk Smith & Bill Bleau laying out and tracing pattern on wood canvas THREE - Carve the outline of the leaf onto the wood canvas Bill & Kirk Smith, Barry Barkley, and Karl Loblien carving outline of leaf FOUR - Cut background (negative space) so leaf appears above background Paul Sherman, Kirk Smith, and Bill Bleau cutting away the negative space (background) FIVE - Carve the face of the leaf giving depth and movement to the leaf Doug Woodward, Bill Blue, & Sammy Long carving leaves SIX - Draw and carve the stem (no photos) SEVEN - Embellish the negative space (background) The negative space can be removed, carved, or burned EIGHT - Refine and smooth leaf surface and coat with Heritage Danish Oil (no photo) FINISHED PRODUCTS Sammy Long's MSWG Class of 2022 Wood Carvers

February 26, 2022 – MSWG club meeting with guest demonstrator Sammy Long, Bartlett Station Municipal Center MSWG's February guest demonstrator is Sammy Long. MSWG Members are in for a real treat. Sammy will also be one of this year's demonstrators at the AAW International symposium in Chattanooga. Setup starts at 8am, general meeting at 9, and Sammy Long will start around 9:15. We will end around shortly after 12 noon, do the raffle, and clean up. Afterwards join your friends for lunch at your favorite restaurant. This demonstration will NOT be recorded for future reference, Zoomed/broadcasted or uploaded to YouTube.

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Audubon Park We’re happy to be back for the 49th Annual Pink Palace Crafts Fair benefitting MoSH, the Museum of Science & History. The weather is predicted to be perfect for our second and third days. Therefore, we a even better sales (sales are typical better on Saturday than Friday). We plan on doing tops on lathe 2 for the children on Saturday and Sunday and this always draws a crowd. This video showcases our booth and, at the end, Skip is explaining woodturning to a young child. Hope to see everyone there on Saturday or Sunday.

MSWG August Demo, 8/21/2021 Jeff Brocket, member TAW, Nashville, TN and MSWG By: Joseph Voda If you missed the August demo last weekend, we know who you are - there were only 24 members on the ZOOM Interactive Remote Demonstration. Unfortunately, such IRD meetings are currently unavoidable. As a group, our collective health is a priority and city and county health-distancing requirements cannot be achieved with us all in the facility’s room. This monthly meeting demonstration was broadcast over ZOOM by the technical crew of MSWG, via a well-developed and very professionally presented IRD. That said, the Board is intent in helping you join ZOOM sessions as they are presented. So, please contact a BoD member for help with a training session. (End of commercial introduction.) Jeff Brocket is known to most of us, either from past demonstrations at MSWG, his involvement in the TAW Symposiums in Franklin, or his past terms as Board Director with AAW. Read more about Jeff Brocket HERE Of note in his presentation, Jeff pointed out his own personally developed techniques to the process of platters with Beaded Illusion (basket-weave). In a short slide show, Mr. Brockett provided examples of his work, referencing his artistic maturity through chronological references. Jeff’s first statement was that he prefers to work with hard maple, ash and other woods having fine grain, which improves the crisp lines of the basket illusion. Breaking from the usual tenon and screw-center mounting arrangement, Jeff placed an 8/4 circular blank between a Steb drive center and the tailstock. He turns a recess for tower jaws on his Nova chuck, to hold the platter in expansion mode once the exterior detailing is completed. Of particular interest to me, is his use of a gentle curve as the preferred shape. One last item that caught a bit of attention, was “why the red piece of tape on your gouge?” Jeff explained that ALL his tools are color-coded to match specific sharpening jigs with desired angles. As this is a blog post and not a detailed, wordy recap, and with enlightened guidance from the late Messrs. Fred R. Barnard and Paul Harvey, if “a look is worth a thousand words,” then the accompanying photos will tell “the rest of the story!” Click on photo to enlarge (not in any special order).

Our demonstrator for the August 21 meeting will be MSWG member Jeff Brockett of Nashville. Jeff writes: "The first time I saw David Nittman’s basket illusion pieces I was blown away and thought “how does he do that?” Several years ago I had the opportunity to take a class with Harvey Meyer and learned the techniques required to create Basket Illusion turned pieces of wood art. My work is heavily influenced by Native American Indian baskets, stained glass windows and kaleidoscope patterns. My wife is my design critic and helps keep me on the straight and narrow path." Drawing on the inspiration of David Nittman, Jim Atkins and other artists, Jeff has researched ancient Indian designs that could be adapted to wood. He will share his process, techniques, and materials during the demo. Jeff has served on the board of directors for the American Association of Woodturners, is a member of Tennessee Craft and is also a member of the Tennessee Association of Woodturners. Mark your calendar so you don't miss what promises to be an excellent demo. Artist Statement Jeff Brockett is a retired retail executive who has been working with wood for over 40 years. He began woodturning about 20 years ago and has never looked back. Working out of his workshop in Mount Juliet Jeff spends hours creating his basket illusion series. The basket illusion pieces start out as solid pieces of hard maple. “I am passionate about the craft of woodturning. I willingly share techniques on turning wood, finishing wood, safe woodworking practices, proper tool and equipment use. I have strived to increase awareness and the appreciation of design for wood turned objects that have function or artistic objectives. My goal is to produce quality craft and educate the public about woodturning. The majority of my wood is obtained from tree services and sawmill off cuts. I create all my functional pieces entirely on the lathe. My basket illusion series is turned on the lathe and embellished off of the lathe. I focus on making my work attractive as well as useful. Creating pieces that can be used fulfills my purpose as a craftsman. I began my woodturning adventure in Nashville, TN where I saw a woodturning demonstration at a local craft show. This became the start of what has become a wild and crazy ride. I immediately began connecting with other woodturners, attended symposiums and joined three AAW woodturning chapters. I have served as an officer for the Tennessee Association of Woodturners and as the Vice-President of the American Association of Woodturners. I have demonstrated for several local woodturning chapters. In addition I teach woodturning, and provide woodturning demonstrations for local craft fairs.”

I started woodturning in 2004 but have worked with wood for much, much longer (furniture, home repairs, etc.). In 2008 I served as president of the Mid-South Woodturners Guild. In 2016 I was honored with an Honorary Lifetime Member Award by the MSWG. In 2018, after I retired, I agreed once again to serve on the MSWG board as a member at large. This year I am serving as MSWG's Vice President. My demo will feature the making of a beverage smoker - just like the ones featured in my recently published article in AAW's February 2021 Woodturning Fundamentals online issue. If you are a member of AAW then you can download the publication for free at https://www.woodturner.org > Resources > Woodturning Fundamentals

Rick Stone is no stranger to demonstrating for crowds. He is a frequent contributor at both Midsouth Woodturner Events and demonstrating at The Woodwork Shop whenever they need to add some talent to their program. This November, Rick will be demonstrating a birdhouse ornament for the club on November 21st, 2020. Be sure to tune in on the Zoom broadcast direct from Rick's shop in Bartlett, TN.

We are vey excited to have Harvey Meyer share with us his techniques creating his Basket Illusion Platters. Saturday the 24th of October, 2020 Harvey will be our Zoom demonstrator for the morning. Harvey is well know for the beautiful pieces he creates using these techniques. You can learn more about Harvey at his website by visiting, http://www.harveymeyer.com. The demo will open at 8:30 and the demo will start at 9:00. There are 3 Documents available for the demonstration, Article From AAW, Basket Illusion Supplies, and Weaving the Rim.

I can't express my excitement for everyone to see the techniques that Skip Wilbur has in store for us on Saturday, the 26th of September 2020. Skip will be demonstrating turning and embellishing a platter but his insert embellishment is far beyond anything you have yet seen in a woodturning demo. Prepare to be amazed. The Zoom room will open at 8:30 and the demo will begin around 9:00. See you there.

It is with great pleasure that we present a wonderful man and turner from Atlanta, Georgia as our demonstrator for the Saturday August 2020 Zoom event. Frank is a great teacher and has practiced woodturning for many years and we look forward to having him.

Trent will be demoing for MSWG on Zoom 07-25-2020 We are looking forward to seeing Trent demo this Saturday. For me, it has been several years since I have seen Trent demo in person but only days since I saw him on the very first AAW Virtual Symposium. Trent is a very artistic and innovative turner and does excellent work in the turning field. He also develops woodturning tools and sells those from him store on his website, https://trentbosch.com. Trent will be turning an item I saw him do years ago but it is quite fascinating, his Vessels of Illusion series hollow form. Join us Saturday 25 July, 2020 on our Zoom broadcast, free to all members of the Mid South Woodturners Guild. See you all there.

We are proud to welcome Lyle Jamieson as the June 202 demonstrator for MSWG. This will be a Zoom demo and you should have received an email detailing how to attend the demo. Lyle has been working with and designing his own hollowing system for over a decade and he has mastered the art of hollowing vessels. Make sure to join this demo Saturday morning.

Cvr***** Good folks of MSWG, This upcoming Saturday the 23rd of May will be our 3rd month and 2nd meeting since we were last able to gather. I hope that all our members still have their health and all their families are well. We have been offering opportunities, in our club and neighboring clubs, to use the Zoom demos that we all have worked to bring to help keep the club motivated and functioning. To that end, we bring you, live from Ireland, an absolutely wonderful and personable woodturner, Glenn Lucas. Glenn will be demonstrating his Dublin Viking Bowl which is styled after an ancient bowl unearthed several years ago in his home country. Glenn is a production woodturner and when I visited a few years ago, he and one other gentleman working with him had prepared 145 bowl blanks that would produce 3 nested bowls each and a center core. Being too small for his needs, he sold or gave away the cores to local craftsmen. The amazing thing about it is each Bowl blank was finished with only three cuts. Talk about minimizing wasted movements! Glenn has a three-yard dumpster near his main lathe and he and his coworker direct most of the wood shavings into the “bin” while turning, making less shavings to clean up. He has an arrangement with a local farmer or rancher who uses the shavings as bedding for his animals. I believe the largest of the set of nested bowls is 16” and all are made from locally harvested woods, Ash and Birch. We can’t wait to see his demonstration and I have not heard of anyone yet seeing his Zoom demo, so we are in for a treat. Next month, June 27th, we have scheduled a well-known turner, Lyle Jamieson, to do a Zoom session for us. Lyle is well known to any who have attended woodturning symposiums in the Mid-South area, for his hollowing systems. Lyle is also a very knowledgeable and capable turner. On July 25th, we have rescheduled a wonderful turner, Trent Bosch to do a Zoom demonstration for our club. Trent, who was scheduled to do our March demo, but was bumped, does some amazing work with hollow forms and has done a great job in every demo I have seen him work. He is a frequently used turner on the AAW circuit, and we are blessed to be able to have him. Joseph Voda ran by the Bartlett Station Municipal Center this week and spoke with the facility manager, Cynthia Black. The facility currently is only open to gatherings of church services for assemblies of 30 people or less, so we will not be able to meet until all restrictions are lifted or relaxed and the “all clear” has been signaled for us to gather once again. We had originally specified a bottom hollowed vessel as a President’s Challenge for the club but since that challenge was made, we have not been able to meet. Joseph Voda actually came up with a great idea and that would be to have our club members enter a written piece to go onto the blog on our website. If you haven’t looked lately at our new, improved website, we are running an ongoing blog to keep everyone current to the workings of our club. For the articles, we encourage everyone to describe a piece they are working on, how they are dealing with the seclusion we are enduring, describe what is going on in your shop. The board will look at the entries and the top four, we will award a $25.00 gift certificate. If you like to write or have a great project you would love to put to pen, please join us in sharing your experiences. I am spending more and more time in the shop lately and I am constantly looking at ways to improve how my shop works. Does everything flow when I am working on a project? Am I constantly shifting materials around to achieve a clean working surface? Is the area easy to service and clean? There are so many questions you can ask yourself that will help you perform normal tasks and be more productive in your work. Take the time to evaluate your work area and make the necessary improvements to help you work smarter and safer while you have the time. As always, I look forward to when we can meet again. Mike Maffitt pg-1***** Pandemic Pandmonium! By: Joseph Voda Hello Fellow Guild-ians! I realize I am not alone in saying, "Having never experienced a pandemic before, I did not anticipate the interruption it would have on Daily life." Specifically, I refer to my confusion over what to do with my duty as editor of our monthly newsletters. With no opportunity to physically meet, I lost the input of data which I counted on to create the publication. Adding to this confusion was the problem we simultaneously experienced with the Guild website. Luckily, we have Mike Maffitt as our webmaster, and he came up with a solution for returning our presence on the ethernet! Still, that did not resolve my confusion of what to do about the newsletter. Earlier this week, as I stared at the website, I realized that maybe the position of "Newsletter Editor" should evolve into "Blog Editor". So, I put this concept to Mike and his response was, "Well, Duh!" That resolved part of my confusion, but where am I to get the content I had grown accustomed to receiving? Then it hit me - "YOU GUYS!" I am certain that each of you have been working diligently in your shops, so you must have a plethora of new techniques, tools acquired (or made) and/or completed turned pieces you can no longer wait to share with us. That being the case, please start by creating a list of all the subjects you can share with us, then write a short account about each one. Email word, or text file, documents and supporting images to me; and our newsletter will be back - just in a new form! Do the same with your best quality images of finished pieces and I will create the Instant Gallery we have come to know and love. Lastly and pertaining to my other duty as Secretary, each of you need to log onto the Members Only page of the website and review your entry on the Roster Directory. Please email me with corrections of any mistakes in, or changes to, your personal data, and send me a headshot to add to your entry. I can't wait to find out how each of you have occupied your quarantine! pg-2***** Concrete Garden Lantern By: Larry Sefton (Ed.: This is the first entry of the articles requested above.) (This is not my photo but the inspiration for my design. To the best of my knowledge this is not a copyrighted design and you can find several of these on the internet including Amazon.com) Over three months ago I was considering buying a couple of oriental-style concrete garden lanterns. No one in the area had anything I liked so I went online. The design I liked can be seen in the attached photo. When I looked at the price ($720 dollars) I had my answer – I have the knowledge, time, skill, and equipment to make my own. So, the process began After a considerable number of sketches, my design called for seven molds for the concrete sections and approximately four 80 lb. bags of concrete. Each of the molds would require all or parts of the molds to made on the lathe. The base material for all of the molds is 1-inch MDF laminated together with contact cement (each surface requires two coats). In some cases, some layers are also screwed together. Before gluing, the MDF was cut to size using a variety of saws. The photo shows the glue-up for making what I call the cap casting. I could have gotten by without the two bottom 1-inch layers of MDF but at the time of making the glue-up that was not known. But knowing that fact sure would have helped by reducing the mold’s weight. In these two photos you see the blank for the lantern’s cap mounted on the lathe (photo 1) with the outside diameter turned to finished size (photo 2). NOTE: When I machined and sanded the MDF I used a dust collection system, a full-face-supplied-air mask, with all exposed skin protected from the dust. After machining, the next step was to waterproof and prep the MDF surfaces so that (1) the mold release and concrete would not destroy the mold and (2) to make the mold reusable. To do this I used two coats of West System Epoxy with slow hardener. Two of the finished molds can be seen in the photo. PROCESS NOTE: to prevent the epoxy from pooling in the bottom on the bowl shape I applied the epoxy while the mold was on the lathe; then ran the lathe at its slowest speed for three hours until the epoxy had time to set up. The next step was to cast the concrete. I used chainsaw bar oil as the mold release agent. The concrete I chose is Crack Resistant High Strength Concrete Mix with fiber reinforcing (Lowe’s). This is a slow setting concrete and it needs to wait 48 hours before de-molding. Based on my preliminary first casting, these molds will last for many castings. Process reminder: in cool weather, trying to demold after an 18 hour wait resulted in a cracked casting and having to remold with a full wait of 48 hours. Do not get in a rush! At the time of this writing several parts are still in the curing process. This photo shows my first lantern as a work in progress. It still needs several steps including the cap section, sanding/grinding, mortar work, and lighting. I may use concrete stain and a topcoat of General Finishes High Performance (yes, GFHP works very well on smooth concrete because I have used it in the past). Next month, if all goes according to plan, I will share photos of one or more of the finished lanterns. In the meantime, if you have questions about the process please email them to me and I will attempt to answer. Depending on the questions, I may also include those answers in the next newsletter. pg-3***** FSBO - For Sale By Owner From: Our Members Since the COVID-19 quarantine seriously interrupted our social meetings, we were deprived of our annual Spring Tool Sale. As a resolution to this, I thought we could use a new section in the Newsletter titled as above: "FSBO - For Sale By Owner". To get it started, I have the following items available.. Please contact me directly. Joseph Voda 901.652.2286 1) 8" Slow Speed Grinder - $90 * 5/8" arbor, 1/2 hp, 1750 rpm, 120 v, * 2 aluminum oxide wheels, 1 each - 60 & 120 grit, 1" wide 2) 5" SKIL Grinder - $40 * 1/2" arbor, 1/5 hp, 3450 rpm, 120v * 2 aluminum oxide wheels, 1 each - 60 & 120 grit, 1/2" wide pg-4***** pg-5***** pg-6*****

We are proud to welcome Glenn Lucas as our May demonstrator. Glenn is an amazing demonstrator and a fine individual. I've seen many of his demonstrations and each is masterfully done with wit and Irish charm. We are glad to welcome him via Zoom all the way from Ireland on May 23rd, 2020. We can't be happier to have his talent displayed for the Memphis TN group, The Midsouth Woodturners Guild.

Coming on April 25th will be a Zoom demonstration of Bob Wolfe demonstrating his lighthouse pepper mill. Our first self produced Zoom demonstration will be our own Bob Wolfe demonstrating his lighthouse pepper mill. Bob was extremely successful marketing these items at the 2019 Pink Palace Craft Fair. Many of them were produced using curly grain bat billets that we picked up while visiting our bat contact in Bernie, Missouri. David Keathly run a company that produces dry bat billets for bat companies that supply major league players and professional teams as well as minor league franchises. The good part of this whole venture is he cannot use curly wood in a bat, it must be made of the straightest wood possible which is how we purchase the highly figured wood from him which allows him to make some money from an unusable product in the bat industry. This is the pepper mill sample that Bob had at his shop when I visited to do the run through for his demo. Beautiful work.