Our August meeting started as usual with announcements. Jay Perrine announced that he will officially retire in 24 hours from work and not from BAWA. Congratulations Jay.

Stan Booker presented an update on the two wood raffles. The Jatoba board is within $16 of a drawing for the winner. The Myrtle tickets are being offered for sale tonight. The door prizes for the evening include a T-shirt, a $10 gift certificate at Japan Woodworker and a mystery item. Stan described his charitable venture in Tanzania that is growing in scope. As many will recall, in the past Stan has solicited used hand tool donations to take to Tanzania. This effort has been most successful. Now there is a need for books describing basic woodworking skills. Stan can mail these books to Tanzania in either of two standard post office boxes. It costs $49 for postage to send the full larger sized box and $35 for the smaller box. If you want to donate books then contact Stan at sbooker07@alamedanet.net or 510-522-7879.

Tony Fanning said there is a large disassembled Oak bed in a warehouse in Mountain View that is available for free. The wood can be salvaged and is in good shape. In addition, Tony may have identified a charitable project that could be of interest to BAWA. He and his wife Robbie are group hiking leaders in the Crystal Springs Reservoir. There are many fallen trees and logs that the city of San Francisco would like to salvage for lumber and then have made into picnic tables and benches. Would BAWA be interested in volunteering to make these items from the salvaged lumber? Contact Tony at tonyfanning@mac.com or 650-323-1183.

Harold Patterson has scheduled a Toy Workshop for Saturday, September 20 at Per Madsen's shop in San Francisco from 9 AM-4 PM. The participants will make crickets and toy airplanes. A sign up sheet is being sent around tonight. Contact Harold at haroldp16@comcast.net or 650-349-7922 if you want to participate.

Items in the Silent Auction were announced. There were several boxes of assorted grit sandpaper for a 5", 8 hole disc sander. A new router extension table for a table saw with a minimum bid of $20. Richard Winslow described the need for a top to a china cabinet. $45 is offered to someone who can make one.

Show and Tell:

John Blackmore purchased a quantity of Alaskan yellow cedar and red cedar. He passed around photographs of some of the furniture he has made with this wood: a dining room table, an entertainment center and four beds.

Jim Luther brought is a beautiful Greene and Greene style desk. It was made from Gonçalvo Alves and Walnut. He finished it with Shellac. The breadboard ends were raised above the desk surface to prevent pencils and pens from rolling off ends of the desk.

Arnie Champagne brought in a prototype of a bench he is making on commission for the railroad museum. One goal is to use as few screws as possible. Therefore, Arnie has chosen to develop an elaborate system of mortises and tenons for use in the bench. It has required ingenuity and creativity.

During the break the members cast votes for the best nametag made by each member. Mark Rand was the tagmeister and vote counter. Gene Clark won with a chisel nametag design.

Don Naples our presenter for the evening also did a Tech Talk.

Don brought in a set of the Orion Speakers for which he makes the cabinets. Designed by a retired HP engineer named Lindquist, these are dipole speakers and must be placed four feet off a wall so as not to cancel out the sound. Plans for the speakers can be purchased for $300. The speaker components consisting of 2 10" woofers, two tweeters and two mid-range at a cost $2000. The 12 channel amp alone costs $1650. The complete speaker system including the cross over system can be purchased finished for $8,500-$9,500.

When making the cabinets, Don uses a pin router to form the sides then planes the boards with a smoothing plane. He has a favorite infill Spiers plane. He also uses an HNT Gordon plane for some of the finer edge details. The baffle panel has an Ebony stripe to match the shadow line on the speaker panel above. The cabinets are usually finished with a cabinet scraper since sanding would dull the luster of the wood. The Bubinga cabinets he brought to the meeting were spray finished with a General Finishes oil and polyurethane. For the first four coats he uses a gloss finish since it contains fewer solids and will not dull the look of the wood. The final coat is a satin finish. He does not sand between coats, but may lightly scrape with a card scraper.

Don then started his Main Presentation which dealt with sharpening.

Don is the inventor and manufacturer of the Lap Sharp sharpening system. Using flat abrasive discs mounted on a horizontal turntable turning at 160 rpm, this system produces a flat grind as opposed to a hollow grind produced on rotating vertical wheel sharpening systems.

Don recalled that Mark Twain defined what it takes to be an expert in just about anything. To be an expert, you need 10,000 hours of experience. Period. Don began his presentation by cautioning us to believe almost nothing of what we hear. He asked us to question if what is being said makes logical sense. If it does, then try it and then make up your own mind if it is believable. Develop your own base of experience.

Hollow grinding, such as that achieved on the Tormek wheel creates a weaker cutting edge because more of the steel is removed from behind the edge. The hollow matches the radius of the wheel on which it was cut.

Flat grinding, has less control and more difficult to achieve, leaves more steel behind the cutting edge and therefore produces the strongest cutting blade. A honing guide can help.

Grit standards are varied, confusing and not always comparable. Canada uses CAMI, Europe uses FEPA, Japan uses JIS and then there is micron u. The Lap Sharp uses the micron standard. Most sandpaper uses FEPA, distinguished with a P before the grit number. Don listed the equivalent grits using the different standards: CAMI-400; FEPA-P500-600; JIS-500; u (microns) 30. Norton sandpaper from Canada uses the FEPA standard. That is why you see the P before the grit number.

But what is sharp? Sharp is what works for you. For example, planing Mahogany does not require to be as sharp as say Leopard Wood or some other wood with a varied grain. When sharpening chisels and plane blades it is essential that the back of the blade be flat, otherwise the beveled edge will be irregular. Flatness can be achieved on water stones, but more easily on the Lap Sharp machine. The back edge is placed flat on the horizontal disc, gradually changing to progressively finer micron grit levels.

Don showed us a Jatoba board with a knot is the middle of it. If you plane this board you will be planning against the grain from any direction it is approached. The solution: wood has no grain at the microscopic level. So grab your Bedrock, Lie Nielsen, Spiers, Norris or Mathison and sharpen the blade. Start with the back and get it flat. Then sharpen the bevel. Radio Shack sells a good 30x microscopic viewer. Inspect your sharp microscopic edge then put it in the plane and get to work.

A fellow named Charlesworth has suggested a way to speed up flattening the back of the plane blade. Simply put a thin flat ruler under the back end of the blade to angle the blade slightly as the front portion of the blade back is being flattened. Not a good idea, says Don. You change the angle of the sharpened edge.

Some people advocate creating several angles on the cutting surface: a primary bevel say at 25 degrees, a secondary bevel at 30 degrees and a front micro bevel of 35 degrees.

On larger smoothing planes, like the #5 or #6, you may want a slight camber at the blade edges to prevent gouging the planed wood.

Honing guides can be useful to ensure an even, defined angle while sharpening. The Lee Valley guide is an excellent value. Lap Sharp will be introducing their new angle guide soon. Beware when sharpening on a stone. The honing guide will wear the stone into a groove or channel.

Sand paper on a flat glass surface can be a useful sharpening method, the so-called scary sharp process. Stay away from silicon carbide paper since the material breaks down to powder creating a non-uniform abrading surface. Aluminum Oxide abrasive paper is far superior. Sometimes known as lapping film or micro finishing film, it is available in sheet form at the Japan Woodworker in Alameda.

He talked about planes and showed from his large collection on the table that some planes have a thicker iron and the frog supports the iron all the way down. Japanese irons have a harder steel back and softer on the other side.

Don handed out a sheet called Quick Guide to Chisels. It will be in the library.

And since the meeting was running late, we stopped the presentation and held the raffle for door prizes: John Blackmore won the mystery gift, courtesy of Sam Adams and John is a teetotaler. Oh well, a 6-pack won't hurt and no one will know. The Jatoba board was won by Neal White who bought 653 tickets.