The focus of this month’s meeting of the Nova Woodturners Guild was the club’s upcoming 2010 Woodturning Competition.

We were fortunate to have John Macnab speaking on the competition preparation, form and artist’s intent.

John recently won this year’s Lieutenant Governor’s Master Arts Award for his piece entitled CSDC 3-8 (Compound Spiral Double Cone No. 3, 8 Sided). This sculpture is a 25-foot long spiral sculpture turned from red spruce. It is best described as, “Suspended horizontally, it presents a floating form of lyrical grace and simplicity that belies the complexity of its production and its remarkable cross-disciplinary origins.”

John is a self-taught woodturner and machinist and his beautiful turned sculptures have been shown in galleries across North America. Combining his woodturning background and his engineering skills he invented a 20-foot vertical lathe that enables him to turn large spiral sculptures. Here’s a photo of John at work at the lathe in his studio:

Continue reading 'NWG – On Competition Preparation'

The focus of this month’s meeting of the Nova Woodturners Guild was a journey into the mysterious world of pricing and marketing of craft items. The guest speakers were members Don Moore and Stephen Zwerling who both gave us lots of important and thought provoking ideas for selling our woodturned products.

The meeting opened with an acknowledgement and a big round of applause for Rona, ‘The Canadian How-To People’ for opening their doors to us and allowing us to hold our future meetings here. This was followed by a short business session that included a club financial report and club website update.

From there, Don Moore took the floor and gave us a great review of the marketing options available to us. He interspersed his presentation with hints, tips and information gained through his own experience as a professional seller of art and craft.

Don spoke about many of the different avenues to sell our wares including craft shows, galleries, auctions, agents, collectors and cooperatives. Another very viable option that he mentioned was networking through associations. With each of these options he included an overview of the things to look for. For example, when checking out a craft show look at the floor layout, the displays, your competition, talk to the vendors and even the customers. Then ask yourself, “Is the floor layout conducive to maximum sales?”, “Are the displays of the quality and/or type that you are seeking?”, “Is there a lot of competition?”, Is there no competition?”, “Are the vendors happy with the results?”, “Are the customers enjoying the shopping experience?” “Do you want your products displayed here?”

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After a bit of a scramble, this month’s meeting of the Nova Woodturners Guild was held at our local Busy Bee Tools store. The feature of the evening was a presentation by our longtime friend, Mel Larsen from SIA Abrasives.

Mel is always a welcomed visitor because he brings a wealth of information on the latest and greatest products and happenings in the abrasive world.

On this visit he introduced us to several new products in the SIA line including foam abrasives, foam sanding blocks, the 1950 Siaspeed line and abrasive wool. Some can be seen here in a photo of the samples that were available to us:

Continue reading 'Some Sia Sanding Solutions At The NWG'

We kicked off the 2009-2010 season of the Nova Woodturners Guild the other night and if this meeting is any indication of what we can expect for the rest of the year we are in for a great time!

The meeting began with a meet and greet, a chance to catch up on what we all did this past summer. As you can imagine, with over 30 members in attendance there was a buzz in the air from the multitude of conversations going on at the same time and the excitement of a new year. It was just like ‘old home’ week!

We met at Halifax Specialty Hardwoods which has become our kickoff spot for the past couple of years. The large retail and shop areas make for a welcomed outing and is very conducive for a get-together such as this, a place where we can peruse while chatting.

Once the meeting got underway it was quickly handed over to Halifax Hardwood Specialties owner/operator Darryl Vallis who introduced a couple of new species, Ebony and Tigerwood, that are now specially cut to sizes of interest to woodturners. Then it was out to the shop for an introduction to their new six-head moulder:

Continue reading 'A Kickoff To The NWG 2009-2010 Season'