Fellow Members ---

By now you should have heard about the hand-cut dovetail class we are running over the weekend 31st October/1st November. We live in a world where today, at least in the USA, 99% or more of woodwork is done by power tools. I suspect that even in the professional world hand crafting is a little used art.

I often buy my lumber from PALS over in Oakland. My car's lumber carrying capabilities are limited to 8ft lengths. This means that I purchase 10 or 12ft lengths of board, take them into the car park, balance them over a plastic milk crate and use my large cross cut saw to chop them into lengths suitable for fitting inside the car. Last time I was there someone commented that today most carpenters do not even own hand saws.

There are many advantages of using power tools such as the time and effort needed to complete a project. But hand-cut joints and hand planed surfaces add a special craftsman feeling to a piece of work.

I think in BAWA most of us want to build, or at least hear about the building of, hand crafted works. Yes, we use power tools where appropriate but our most popular meetings tend to be when we have members talking about hand tools and manual techniques. Hence the popularity of our August meeting that was focused on using a plane.

If our interest was only in CMT tools and programming we would not be members of BAWA.

So we have some very relevant events and meetings over the next few months. In October we will have a Saturday visit to California Urban Lumber in Martinez to see how they mill and dry timber. Our regular meeting will be a hand-plane seminar. Then we will have a hand-cut dovetail class at the end of October.

I hope you all feel you are getting benefits from your BAWA membership.

We are starting to plan next year's program. If you have suggestions for any other activities/topics the Board should consider then please let us know.

It is your Association and we want to make sure it provides you with interesting meetings and visits.