Officers' Reports & Member Announcements

Robbie Fanning reported that we have about $2,700 in the bank, enough for all members to take a trip to Las Vegas.

Mark Rand reported that 6 Flag Display Boxes were finished and would be delivered to Bill Tarleton of the Diablo Woodworkers for inclusion in his shipment of over 100 boxes to New York. A flag will be placed in each box and will be presented to family members of those Police and Firemen killed on 9/11.

Jay Perrine outlined the April also the May meeting presentations. They can be found elsewhere in this newsletter.

Arnie Champagne described his schedule of classes. See details under Classifieds.

Stan Booker passed out some reprints. One described some pull saws developed by Vaughan & Bushnell of Hebron, Ill. The other described a new book The Art of Fine Tools by Sandor Nagyszalanczy. Sandor has been a guest lecturer at BAWA several times. Both reprints will be in our library.

Craig then introduced a visitor, Tim Mensch of Oakland who found us on the Internet. He is starting out and has some hand tools and a wimpy table saw.

Show & Tell

Arnie Champagne showed some bath towel racks and other hardware he's making from Corian and using stainless steel rods. He discussed how he works with small scrap pieces of Corian (from Urban Ore behind McBeath in Berkeley) and 12" lengths of rod (from Bay Shore Metals).

Bill Manix brought some joinery samples he made using a router. They were very complicated and one assumed they could only have been done by hand. For example one was a mitered corner with a hidden mortise and a through tenon. Yet he did it with multiple passes with his router. Amazing!

Main Presentation

After a short break, we were led to the back rooms (some had already sneaked peeks) to see an amazing array of machines with dials, gages and other "stuff." Bill Manix introduced us to our host Doug McAdoo, the owner of Bay Area Carbide. Doug started working here in 1975 at a young age (no numbers divulged). Then became a Union carpenter for a couple of years and then came back. He bought the business in 1996. He talked about his 2 acres with a crummy house but a nice wood shop. He started our tour by demonstrating a very elaborate sharpening grinder for smooth edge cutters. As with most of his equipment, it is computer controlled German machine which is worth about $100,000. It has interchangeable grit wheels for various jobs. He demonstrated sharpening a paper-shearing knife which was about 4' long then some small blades also. Describing this machine (and all the others) would take pages since they are very sophisticated machines. Saw blades of various diameters also go through an elaborate process using various machines to flatten the blade, properly tension the blade, repair sections if necessary and grind or sharpen every part of the cutting edge.

One computer-controlled machine does the grinding/sharpening process automatically on blades that have combinations of tooth arrangements. He also demonstrated his band saw blade making machines with a member getting 2 blades as we watched. With all the fancy equipment, it was soon apparent that a tremendous amount of experience is needed to do the job correctly. I felt one of the teeth of a finished blade, it seemed sharper than the new ones at the store! He finished up by giving away some goodies such as jig saw blades. A very gracious host and a very informative evening.

Door Prizes

We finished up with Stan Booker giving out the door prizes which were Surfoam type planing blades to attach to hacksaw frames. Raffle wood is Zebrawood, buy your tickets now before they are sold out.