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Speaker: Giles Gilson - Turning sculptural forms
"Gilson's interests stretch beyond woodturning. Along with his engineering background, he currently designs, builds, and flies radio controlled aircraft. Jazz and his work with theater and stage design have heavily influenced his work.
He combines all of these experiences when he approaches the lathe. Gilson’s has lead the avant-garde impulse in wood turning, by employing paint and mixed-media approaches that try to disguise the wood."
This Friday's presentation will be a slide show covering well over 30 years of his work. Giles was not only one of the early pioneers in woodturning, but also a major influence in the art world, industrial design, and painting. The slide presentation will feature many of Giles’ works from deep hollow turnings to race cars he designed and built. Of particular interest will be the years of development that Giles has done in finishing and painting. He will talk about the various pieces of work, the development of the piece, the creative and design inspirations, and the methodologies of the construction. It promises to be a very unique presentation.
Location: Basil Hall, St. John Fisher College
Time: 7:00 PM (pre-meeting display); 8:00 PM (lecture)
Speaker: David Marks - Contemporary furniture and finishes
"My work expresses a sense of time and mystery. My inspiration is derived from a fusion of styles including ancient Egyptian, African, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Asian. But essential to all my designs is the attention I pay to fine details.
After studying art at Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz, I moved to Santa Rosa and began working in cabinet and furniture shops during the 1970s. In 1981, I opened my own Santa Rosa studio and built one-of-a-kind furniture throughout the 1980s. In the 90s, my focus shifted towards wood turning and sculpture.
Today, besides my continued work in fine woodworking, I am interested in patination. The patina finish that is a trademark of my work, is a hybrid I’ve developed over the last decade. It combines painting, gilding (metal leafing), chemical patinas, and lacquering techniques. The complex layers result in something that gives the appearance of a faux, ancient, petrified stone quality."
Location: Basil Hall, St. John Fisher College
Time: 7:00 PM (pre-meeting display); 8:00 PM (lecture)
Handout: David Marks on Furniture Design
Speaker: Gary Rogowski - Tools, fixtures, and jigs
Of his work, "Gary has been designing and building fine furniture for public and private commissions since 1974. A contributing editor for Fine Woodworking magazine and author of The Complete Illustrated Guide to Joinery and Router Joinery, he has been teaching woodworking for over 20 years. His furniture designs have been featured in many Taunton Press Design Books and have won him an Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship. His writing continues to focus on creative and practical methods of construction and joinery."
Location: Basil Hall, St. John Fisher College
Time: 7:00 PM (pre-meeting display); 8:00 PM (lecture)
January 6, 2006
Speaker: Alan Breed - Newport furniture"ALLAN BREED began his woodworking career at age 11 when he used to attend auctions and buy antique pieces for himself. At age 19 he worked for the MFA program at Boston University in the restoration department while attending the University of New Hampshire where he majored in history. In 1976 he started cabinetmaking full time in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Since then he has built furniture for the Gardiner-Pingree house at the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, the old South Meeting House in Boston, and the Strawberry Banke Museum in Portsmouth. Allan has lectured for the Dallas Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Museum of Art, the Henry Ford Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum, Christie’s and Sotherby’s to name a few. In 1989 he was commissioned to make a copy of the Nicholas Brown Newport desk and bookcase by Christie’s after they sold the original for $12.1 million. He was featured on the front cover of FINE WOODWORKING October 1999."
Location: Basil Hall, St. John Fisher College
Time: 7:00 PM (pre-meeting display); 8:00 PM (lecture)
Speaker: Chuck Rinehart - RWS' own: a lifetime of woodworking
Location: Basil Hall, St. John Fisher College
Time: 7:00 PM (pre-meeting display); 8:00 PM (lecture)
Speaker: Darrel Peart - Furniture in the style of Greene & Greene
"My influences as a furniture maker/designer have been many. It's within the Arts & Crafts Movement (Craftsman, Mission) that I feel at home though. The ideals of John Ruskin and William Morris have been an inspiration to me. The movements many designers (and craftsmen) such as Gustav Stickley, Harvey Ellis, CFA Voysey, and CR Mackintosh, have all played a part in my development. But it's the Pasadena architects, Charles and Henry Greene ( Greene and Greene) that have captivated me the most. The furniture from their " Ultimate Bungalow " period (Gamble, Thorsen, Pratt, and Blacker Houses) represents not only the best from the American Arts & Crafts Movement but also some of the most sensitive and thoughtful designs ever produced. Charles Greene's blending of the American Arts & Crafts style with Asian influences was nothing less than divine."
Location: Basil Hall, St. John Fisher College
Time: 7:00 PM (pre-meeting display); 8:00 PM (lecture)
Design Workshop with Giles Gilson
Location: Woodcraft
The Saturday workshop will be a hands-on, design workshop. Learn some of the techniques for taking your rudimentary idea and quickly mocking it up in 3D to see how the idea works. These ideas also work well for testing design changes on works that are already being built. The emphasis for the day will be taking the germ of an idea through the iterations necessary to get a desired end. A host of rapid prototyping techniques will be taught along with various design philosophies. The workshop will cover design, prototyping, problem solving, refinement, and evaluation. These techniques work for most (if not all) categories of woodworking, including turning, cabinet work, sculpture, and carved work, so woodworkers of all persuasions will benefit from the workshop. Space is limited to 20 participants.
Materials list:
Paper and pencil for notes & drawings
Straight edge or ruler and a compass (if you have one) for layouts
Utility knife for cutting foam
Router workshop, conducted by Joe Byer
Location: Woodcraft
Digital photography workshop, conducted by Kent Campbell
Location: Woodcraft
Completed! - see RWS November 2005 Newsletter (PDF - 455K) for a report on this workshop.
Contemporary furniture and finishes workshop, conducted by David Marks
Location: Woodcraft
Completed! - see RWS November 2005 Newsletter (PDF - 455K) for a report on this workshop.
Tools, fixtures & jigs workshop, conducted by: Gary Rogowski
Location: Woodcraft
Period furniture workshop, conducted by: Alan Breed
Location: Woodcraft
Our January speaker, Allan Breed, is a well know Period Furniture maker, with special expertise in the Newport style of the Goddard and Townsend families. Allan’s workshop will feature a slide show and talk about building a replica of the John Goddard tea table which was sold at auction this past January for over $6,000,000! Allan was commissioned by the owners of the table (decedents of the Goddard family) who put it up for auction at Sotheby’s.
The table features scalloped top and sides, open ball & talon feet, veneered upper legs, and a very refined knee carving. If there is time remaining, he is will discuss, and demo other techniques that participants may have, such as a Newport shell.
February 4, 2006
Back to Basics: Woodworking 101 by George Harvey and Chris Eades
Location: WoodcraftBack to Basics Woodworking 101 will be a workshop geared to the beginning woodworker, but with tips, tricks and trade information that may be useful to all levels of woodworkers. The topics to be included will be Shop Safety, Basic tools (from kinds of pencils to measuring instruments and various uses), Shop Layout, Tools you must have and Tools you could live without, and Power Tools. It will cover buying lumber and tools at auctions, garage sales and through the newspaper. New and used power tool safety and how to set them up for greatest efficiency will be taught. Also, buying blades, router bits and hand tools will be covered. There will also be demonstrations of simple jigs and joinery everyone can make.
George Harvey grew up on a small farm and became proficient in fixing and building farm parts using a lot of twine and wire and simple hand tools. Over the years he has done various woodworking from building houses, even his own 20 sided house, and furniture.
Chris Eades has been a cabinet maker and woodworker for over 25 years. He worked with Tim Wahl for many years and now has his own woodworking business. Together they have over 50 years of making sawdust. This will be fun and interesting workshop that will hopefully get everyone attending excited about woodworking.
Dovetail joinery workshop, conducted by: Chuck Rinehart
Location: Woodcraft
At his workshop, Chuck would like to talk about and demonstrate the dovetail joint: through, blind, angled and mitered. He is especially excited about the mitered dovetail, which he recently used extensively on a “Japanese Dragon” toy box. Chuck displayed this toy box at the October Pre-meeting display. Later, Chuck will discuss his "standardized" method for making drawers, which he has evolved over many years. If time permits he would like to have an open discussion on joinery with the workshop attendees.
Water gilding workshop, conducted by Gian-Paul Piane
Location: WoodcraftThis class will focus on the age-old process of water guilding. This process involves building up subsequent layers of resilient substrate onto a wood medium in preparation to receive a metal (often times gold) leaf application on its surface.
This technique was a mainstay of the exterior signage industry for many years and yielded an extremely durable and weather-resistant product that served its intended use for many years.
In this class we will cover the steps involved in making all of the components that constitute the various layers of substrates. We will go through a hands-on session of applying these various materials and conclude with the application of the leaf itself.
Gian-Paul is an architect and an adjunct teacher at RIT. He is also a graduate of RIT's Master of Fine Arts in Woodworking and is one of the premier students to come out of RIT. He is a designer and a master woodworker.
Furniture in the style of Greene & Greene
Conducted by: Darrel Peart
Location: Woodcraft
April 15, 2006
WOODEN BOAT BUILDING BASICS with professional cabinetmaker and boat builder Tim Wahl from Livonia, NY. Tim will bring two examples including a stripper canoe and an outboard runabout.Location: Woodcraft
Wooden boats are wonderful to look at and a pleasure to build. Built well and maintained properly, they will last for generations. Modern construction will yield a boat that is light, strong, as well as rot resistant. By building a boat yourself, you will enjoy building it as well as using it. So what does it take to build a boat?
This session will cover how to build a boat including:
- Tools and workshop requirements
- Designs, where to find plans, lofting vs. plans, patterns and kits
- Different methods including wood strip building, stitch and glue, and conventional
- Steam bending and laminating
- Where to find materials including lumber, marine plywood, epoxy, fiberglass, fasteners, and hardware
- How to use epoxy and fiberglass
- Finishing including paint, varnish, and oil
- Books, resources and websites
NOTE: See the RWS Archives and the Newsletter Archives for a gallery of past workshops; see the RWS Library for workshop videos.
September 23, 2005
Stickley Tour
Completed! - see RWS November 2005 Newsletter (PDF - 455K) for a report on this tour.
Parsons Pipe Organ Builders open house (Sunday, 11/6/05 from 1PM to 5 PM).
See brochure (Parsons Pipe Organ Builders Open House (PDF - 354K) for details and directions.
November 17, 2005 (click images to enlarge) Lehmann Stringed Instruments tour (Thursday, 11/17/05 from 7PM to 9PM). Bernie Lehman has graciously invited us to his studio to learn about the techniques of making stringed instruments. For more information, try his web site www.lehmannstrings.com.
Please make individual arrangements to transport yourself to his studio at 34 Elton Street in Rochester. He has space to accommodate 20 or so guests but is willing to have more attend.
June 3rd, 2006 - 12:00PM
Milestone Glass Creations1110 Culver Road (2 to 3 blocks from East Main heading east)In keeping with the Greene & Greene Furniture seminar and workshop, Milestone will provide an introduction to stained glass creations. The owner will discuss design, material selection and fabrication for woodworking projects such as jewelry boxes, cabinet doors and the like. This will be an open session so bring your thoughts and questions.
The facility can support attendance in the range of 20 to 25 people. Be prepared to sign up at the next seminar in April. For further info contact Joe Lorenzo 383-8456.
February 18, 2006
Specialty Tools Depot - 10 AM - 4 PM - tool demonstration & special pricing on woodworking related items.
Northeastern Woodworkers Association's SHOWCASE 2006 - City Center in Saratoga Springs, NY
The show features furniture and accessories, sports equipment and toys made by regional amateur and professional woodworkers. Last year’s SHOWCASE 2005 attracted nearly 6,000 attendees and woodworkers exhibited over 450 pieces. Woodworkers from throughout the Northeast are invited to enter their work for competition or for display. Entry forms must be received by March 22 to be eligible for judging. Exhibit hall entry categories include:
- Adirondack furniture and accessories
- Furniture (several categories)
- Accessories
- Toys/Miniatures
- Turning (several categories)
- Carving
- Inlay, Intarsia, Marquetry
- Scroll Sawing
- Novice
- Other
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