News in the Trade, or What's Happening in Woodturning Circles

by Fred Holder

 Darrell Nish of Craft Supplies announced that they now have a Bulletin Board at their web site at: http://www.woodturnerscatalog.com. He invited me to take a look at it and give any feedback. I did that and liked what I saw, a screen shot of that page is shown above and to the right of this column. It is very nice to have a capability to post a classified advertisement for free that can reach all over the world, these are non-commercial however. The Events Board allows you to post events that are coming up for your club and allows you to check to see what others have coming up. At this time, only the Utah Woodturning Symposium and the AAW Symposium are currently listed. If you have a web site, this is a nice place to place a link to your site. Again this is intended to be non-commercial and should eliminate the various business from trying to take advantage of a free way of advertising.

I received this letter from Johathan Frank who is trying to get a woodworker show going because of the demise of the American Woodworker Show last year. “I am not a turner, I’m dangerous with my pocket knife. But I have some pretty amazing turner friends, including the man who turned the official World’s Largest Wooden Bowl, Stuart Mortimer. He turned that bowl as a publicity stunt for me when I produced the American Woodworker Shows. My name is Jonathan, and I am about to launch my own woodworking events this fall. The American Woodworker Show folded this past November, I intend to fill the void with a woodworking event called “WoodWorks2002”. Part of this event will include a turning conference. David Ellsworth, Stuart Mortimer, Judy Ditmer, Harry Memelink, and a few other ‘friends’ are on board already. This conference is special. Several years ago, when Stuart turned the record bowl, a blind man heard about the bowl on TV. He was listening to the Philadelphia news with his wife and he heard the story. The blind man, named George Richardson, came down to the show with his wife to meet Stuart and to feel the bowl. George, left the show a changed man. He bought a used mini lathe, and taught himself to turn pens. He now supplements his income selling pens he makes. George will be at this conference as a presenter. I hope he inspires physically challenged people as much as he has inspired local woodworkers.
WoodWorks2002 is also going to work with the local turning organizations to raise money for charity. Several years ago, we ran a Top-A-Thon top turning for charity drive. It raised over $5000 in 3 days. We hope to do better this year. We’ll have a project shop for kids, and other activities designed to educate, motivate and inspire. Now that I am out on my own, and without the deep pockets of American Woodworker magazine, I am trying to find ways to ‘do the impossible’. A lot of people have agreed to help, they believe this is worthwhile. Stuart Mortimer is coming from the UK , Harry Memelink is coming from New Zealand, and David Ellsworth is local.”

I called Jonathan and asked when and how many of these shows was he planning. At the present time, he is planning two: the first one in Novi, MI on September 27, 28, and 29; the second one will be held in Port Washington, PA on November 1, 2, and 3. I recently received a few more details on these events. In Ft. Washington, a pre-event Wood Turning Conference will commence one day prior to opening day, entitled Whole Earth Turning Conference (W.E.T.).  The full conference features 14 sessions over two days; Turners Stuart Mortimer, David Ellsworth, Rolly Munro, Judy Ditmer, Jimmy Clewes, Helga Becker and Harry Memelink are scheduled to present. An Ontario California conference is in the works for January 24--26, 2003. This will be called WoodWorks2003. They now have a web site at: http://www.woodworks2002.com< /a>

 

A Change in More Woodturning

On to another subject that I’ve tried to delay a decision on for some time. The cost for a subscription of More Woodturning has not changed since I began it in 1996 even though there have been two postal hikes, and a couple of paper price increases that have boosted my printing costs. With this last postal hike and the printing cost hike shortly before that, I have to make a decision. Mildred and I discussed it and decided that rather than increased the cost for a subscription we would increase the number of pages to 16 pages per issue and reduce the number of issues per year to 10. The first time that you will notice this will be in September 2001. We will publish a September/October issue. The next double issue was March--April 2002. I feel that a monthly publication cycle is most desirable; however, when you are an office staff of one, there is never any time for a vacation or to travel to cover events happening in other parts of the world. This has bugged me for some time, but I didn’t have a solution. Our solution, to increase the number of pages and reduce the number of issues, seemed the best choice. This makes a lot more work for me on each issue published, but will reduce the overall cost of publishing More Woodturning to bring it into cost balance and will give me some time to travel and cover other events.

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This Page Last Updated May 22, 2002.