President’s message

Happy New Year!

The club made it another year in good shape. Not everything went perfectly, but the structure of the club and the commitment of its officers and members kept it going. No meetings were missed, we are strong financially, every newsletter was written and sent out on time, our website pulled for us all year and the quality and number of show & tells from members just kept getting better. Thank you to everyone involved.

Minutes The meeting started on time with 21½ members present. An election was held for club officers. Brian Lawson stepped down as the club’s first editor. No one was elected in his place, but John O. will assume that job. Hen Hunt was elected to replace Al Campbell as the club’s first Treasurer. John Osborne as President, John Lee as Publisher, Emil Cafarelli as Vice President and Dan Hittenmark as Webmaster were approved to stay in their positions.

Dues for the new year were discussed and 11 members paid up.

John O and Brian talked about the value of the forms for capturing info for the newsletter.

The Show&Tell action was lively and summarized in this newsletter. If you want more than a summary, show up at the meetings…

This was swap night so that occupied the rest of the meeting.

Ken Hunt asked how to get a wooden timber to precisely fill the interior of this antique axle. Measuring and duplicating the inside taper was the problem and several suggestions were offered by club members.

Earl Austerberry showed two simple, effective ideas. He makes handles for his tap wrenches, which makes a big difference in comfort when there is lots of tapping to do. These are shown in a meat tray from Meijer’s that Earl finds handy for small parts storage.

Emil Cafarelli made a cute alcohol burner from a hollow doorknob and a brass tube in about an hour. He is obsessed with how the doorknob was manufactured. Can someone say definitively so we can put this matter to rest?

Ron Schmidt made a taper attachment for the tailstock of his lathe – from an old boring head. He turned down the R8 shank to a #2 Morse and put a lathe center in place of the boring cutter. Nice.

Ron Schmidt again. He found it necessary to make a replacement reverse gear for the leadscrew on his 10” Atlas lathe. It looks to be far stronger than the original, so Brian Lawson warned Ron that maybe the brass was "too good", and maybe if a problem arises again it may do more damage to the lathe than just a sacrificial dog clutch.