Sin City Woodworkers

The second meeting of woodworkers in the Las Vegas Valley accomplished a few things this past Saturday. First, we adopted a name for our group. From now on, we'll be known as Sin City Woodworkers, and everyone seemed pleased with that moniker. I love to play around with graphic designs and logos, so I told the group I'd try to come up with a couple of logos for us, and will hopefully bring some sketches to our next meeting.

As far as numbers, we had just about the same number of people (about 32) attend the session. From the sign-in sheet, I could tell there were nine new faces, which means we lost about nine people from the last meeting. A few of the no-shows had written to tell me that they couldn't make the Saturday meeting, so I feel optimistic that we're holding steady at about 40 members.



Rich Daugherty gave an interesting talk about some of the hand tools he uses, including a couple of awesome bow saws and a miter shooting block, perfect for truing up mitered cuts. The more I hear guys like Rich talk about hand tools, the more interested I become in acquiring a few. (Oh great, more tools to purchase!)

And I gave a short demo on the Router Buddy, a nifty little device that allows me to cut perfect circles with my router. I've experimented with a number of methods for machining circles in wood, and this is the best system I've found. It's easy to micro-adjust the radius of the circle, and absolutely simple to use. Even better, I mentioned (for the woodturners in the crowd) that the Router Buddy can be used to cut perfect discs in wood. That's great for any lathe owner, who doesn't own a bandsaw, but needs to knock the corners off of turning blocks.



Ed from Peterman Lumber gave us a tour of the facility, and discussed all of the products that they carry. Many of the people in attendance were thrilled to learn about this new source for materials here in Las Vegas.

All in all, we couldn't have asked for a better place to host our meeting. (Thanks, guys!) I'm trying to secure a location for our next meeting ... stay tuned for details!