Home - Woodturners Guild of North Carolina

Wood Drying for Woodturners with Dr. Frederik Laleicke
Please note that this Guild meeting and demonstration will be presented in Hybrid form.
Members may choose to attend live at the NC State Craft Center or attend via Zoom.
Those who plan to attend in person, will be required to wear a face mask.

Thursday December 8th
NC State meeting room and Zoom call opens a 6:15 for socializing
Meeting begins at 6:45 PM
Demonstration begins at 7 PM

How is your wood supply? Do you have problems with cracking even before you rough turn your pieces? Like to have a bit more of a scientific approach and process for drying your wood?

Well maybe we can help, WGNC is happy to welcome one of our local wood experts and assistant professor from NC State University Dr. Frederik Laleicke.

Dr. Laleicke will discuss some of the methods that he recommends for drying wood for woodturners to help the cracking and defects we all like to avoid. He will share wood samples to help with understanding wood anatomy and the characteristics important to woodturning. He will also provide some recommendations on different moisture meters that can be used including price and quality.

Topics to be discussed:

Wood Anatomy related to Drying
- Including the use of 10x lenses to identify common anatomical features
Wood Moisture and the Environment
- Adsorption/Desorption, the concept of equilibrium moisture content
- Drying defects
- How to measure moisture content: moisture meters and oven drying

Zoom log-in instructions will be sent with the meeting notice.

Monthly Show & Tell Session

December 15th
Zoom session opens about 6:30 PM
Meeting begins at 7:00 PM

Please join us each month for our monthly Zoom Show & Tell Session.

This forum is intended for all levels of woodturners and is a safe and respectful place to solicit input and advice, regardless of your experience level.

All WGNC members and their guests are welcome to spend an evening with fellow woodturners as we explore and share members' projects, ideas, issues and yes, even those shop disasters.

We hope to see you for this month's always enjoyable, entertaining and interactive session.

As part of our regular Show & Tell program, we allot time to the session that is devoted to sharing and discussing a Personal Challenge from a recent demonstration. The Personal Challenge is intended as a way to encourage members to try new ideas, techniques and to also be able to obtain advice on subjects covered in the demonstration. WGNC also provides an open invitation to the person who conducted the demonstration to join the session to be available to answer questions and critique the various submissions made by members. These sessions are always a great learning experience and fun.

The upcoming Personal Challenges will be as follows:

For December, the Challenge will come from the November "Creating Small Projects" demonstration that was be presented by Meryl Valnes and Daniel Sauerstrom.

For January, the Challenge will be to pick from any of the 2022 demonstrations.

Members can review video of all the demonstrations here.

Breakout Sessions are Back

WGNC is happy to announce the return of Breakout Sessions. To enhance the value of these sessions to members, we have established a coordinator to help identify topics, hosts and schedules that are aligned with the interests of members.

As Session details are confirmed, the information will be posted on this web page so that a member can look at available subjects and associated details, and then when a topic of interest is found, simply click on the button to sign up.

What exactly is a Breakout Session?

A breakout session is a woodturning event that is hosted by another member for other members to join in and learn or practice any element of woodturning. This could be a shop tour, how to sharpen or make tools, turning a bowl, how to use a skew, pyrography, carving, embellishments and a whole host of other topics. The location could be at a host’s shop or another public location such as NC State Craft Center or a retail store.

Breakout sessions are generally free of charge and are offered on a first come first serve basis. Scheduled sessions will be created as Events and will show up on the Home Page in the "A Look Ahead" table, on the "Events Calendar" and on the "Breakout Session" selection under the "Resources" menu .

To learn more about:
- How to join a breakout session
- How to Host a breakout session
- Review the Breakout Session Schedule
Click here.

These Sessions are a fun, one on one way to learn new skills or just refresh skills you may have previously learned but have not used in a while. It is also a great way to meet new members and/or reconnect with old members.

Hope we see you at a Breakout Session soon!

And in other news:

New WGNC T-Shirts:
(We are temporarily out of shirts! More are on order and will arrive shortly. Watch here for updates)
WGNC is happy to announce the arrival of our newly re-designed Guild T-Shirts. T-Shirts will be available to members at any in-person Demonstration or Show and Tell event.
For full details, pictures and availability, please click here.

Demonstration and Show & Tell videos available for viewing.

Don't forget you can always review all the available WGNC Demos and Show & Tell videos by clicking here. Check them out today!

CLASSIFIED AD APP AVAILABLE TO ALL MEMBERS
Got something in your shop that you haven't used in a while but just don't know what to do with it?
Well now you do, and you can make some money at it as well! We are pleased to announce that WGNC has just launched a Members Only Classified Ads app on the website!

For more information on using this new app, click here.

To go directly to the Classified Ad App, click here