Friday, October 9, 2009

Happy Accidents

The Water Gap Woodturners met On October 7th in the Peters Valley woodshop. The prior month's demo had been provided by Steven Antonucci, who had turned a long stem goblet from the world's worst piece of punky maple. The meeting went immediately into redemption, as Steve showed another long stem goblet he turned the following day without snapping the head off of it!

During the Show and Tell, the meeting attendees began discussing "pricing work" and how some pieces might be affected by the market they were exhibited. While it was not a planned discussion, the topic did take on a life of it's own and carry throughout the meeting. People carried on for almost an hour trying to find the magic formula of inches x species x time spend and in the end, I think we agreed that there was no such formula that fit every situation.

Our presentation for the night was lead by Dan Moore, who had planned on turning a burl cap, but prior topics continued to come into play instead. Dan brought his crates filled with burls and such, and the topic became more focused around "what would you do with this piece" and "how much should someone charge for this type of object?" Dan admitted that he somehow felt like he had cheated us out of actually turning one, but in the end, I believe that it was our best meeting ever.

Next up on deck, we are looking for someone to volunteer for November's meeting before I have to nominate you...

Safe spinning.