MCW - Click It

Links to previously published Click-It sites

The following compilation is a limited selection of woodturning web sites recommended to be worth your viewing time by Gary Guenther in the Click It articles.

Many woodturning web sites have a long list of links to a veritable plethora of other woodturning-related sites. These can be useful, but they can also be daunting. Here is a short list of highly-recommended sites chosen one at a time – each for its uniqueness and excellent content of information, images, or both. They may be technical or artistic, but they are full of treasures that will make you want to come back more than one time. One new link will be added each month.

2010

This month’s site is www.mintmuseum.org/mason.
This is the home page for “Turning Wood into Art: The Jane and Arthur Mason Collection” at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design in Charlotte, NC. Jane and Arthur, who live in Washington, DC, donated a representative selection of their world-class collection of lathe-turned wooden objects in 1999. Forty three artists are represented. [There is also a beautifully photographed book by this title, the companion volume to a traveling exhibition, available from Amazon.]

From this location you can select from four major topics: The Mason Collection, Exhibition Themes, Virtual Exhibition Tour, and Woodturning Resources.

If you enter through The Mason Collection and click Access the Mason Collection Artist Index, you will be presented with a hot-linked artists’ index. Clicking on any artist’s name will bring up photos of their included works.

If you enter through Exhibition Themes, you will find five clickable topics: Design, Material, Esthetics, Process and Image, Storytelling, and Tree Life. Each theme has a number of topics with embedded audio/video clips and images that can be rotated and tilted.

The Virtual Exhibition Tour shows how the show was displayed. It’s a little hard to use, but you can get used to the controls. It’s nice to see the works “in their element”.

Woodturning Resources contains sections on Lathe Nomenclature and Basic Turning Explanations; Tree Anatomy, Wood Grains and Wood Harvesting; a Glossary; and a Bibliography.

This is a very rich site with lots of content; you will probably want to come back to it more than once.

2009

Montgomery County Woodturners (MCW)

This month’s site is http://montgomerycountywoodturners.com

This Web Site has come to my attention because it has won two AAW awards for overall excellence, including a reigning First Place status. Representing a relatively new Club in Suburban Maryland, it is a very easy site to use, with an excellent index of main-topic tabs down the left-hand side of the Home Page.

One of the best features is the extensive set of Photo Galleries that contain a variety of albums of “meeting”, “show and tell”, and “special events” photos dating back to the inauguration of the club three years ago. These include photo essays from demonstrations by name turners such as Stuart Batty, J. Paul Fennell, John Jordan, Ed Kelle, Bill Grumbine, Judy Ditmer, Barbara Dill, Jamie Donaldson, Keith Holt, Alan Hollar, Warren Carpenter, Alan Leland, and more.

On the Newsletter tab, there is are links to the complete set of all past issues of the twice-First-Place-winning Newsletter that contains a broad spectrum of particulars regarding Club activities and general woodturning information.

The Home Page contains a variety of contemporary information including videos and photo albums of Club events, exhibitions, and activities,

Additional tabs bring up extensive sets of articles on the topics of Tips and Safety as well as Outreach and Future Meeting information. This is a very attractive site on which you can spend richly rewarding time – highly recommended for your viewing pleasure.

The Glendale Woodturners Guild

www.Woodturners.org

This may look to you like the AAW site, but theirs doesn’t have the “s”. I must admit, however, that this similarity is how I found this web site of the LA (California) area’s Glendale Woodturners Guild.

This is a very easy-to-use site with the menu down the left-hand side. If you click on the “Newsletter Archive”, you will find issues of a good-quality publication, with imaginative work and good photography, going back nearly 10 years.

The “Technical Tips” section has a variety of links to articles on Turning, Finishing, Tools, Techniques, and Miscellaneous. Perhaps of greatest importance, to me at least, is the “Member Photo Gallery”, a Members Showcase with 75 individual galleries, three group projects, and two major installations/exhibitions. There is a huge number of decently photographed, turned items here for your viewing pleasure and as great ideas for projects of our own. Click It!

5-year archive of Newsletters from our sister group, the Capital Area Woodturners (CAW)

www.capwoodturners.org/archives.html

The CAW web site has a new look and lots of good information (although the Galleries are not up to date). The CAW Newsletter has always been worth reading, and the new editor, Christine Zender, is doing wonderful things with it – I’d rate it as potentially prize winning, and certainly good enough to rate a Click It recommendation.

As many of you may know, in addition to MCW, we have several other excellent woodturning clubs nearby. I’m a member of two others, CAW and Chesapeake, and I heartily recommend them both. They do not provide simple repetition -- each club has its own unique character and strengths that make them worthwhile.

Greater Vancouver Woodturners Guild - Newsletters Index
www.gvwg.ca/_ newsletters.html

GVWG is an AAW chapter in British Columbia, Canada. They have some well known members, including Art Liestman. They are very active and get top turners for demos. It is noteworthy that this Newsletter was recently judged to be the Third best AAW Newsletter for 2009 – after MCW’s and Chicago’s, who tied for

First Place

. Back issues are available on this page back through the year 2002.

South Auckland Woodturners Guild in New Zealand

www.sawg.org.nz

As evidenced on the various online woodturning forums, woodturning is alive, well, and appreciated as craft art in the lovely country of New Zealand on the other side of the world. The Guild was formed over 20 years ago and enjoys a membership of well over a hundred.

Rakova Brecker Gallery

www.rakovabreckergallery.com

The bricks and mortar is in Dania Beach, FL, but they have an amazing web site that is an incredible resource of woodturnings and sculpture that can be used for sheer enjoyment or for design ideas. This home page is a marvelous selection of rotating, breathtaking images of the gallery displays, so I recommend starting there before clicking on our real destination – the “Artists” button. That goes to a list of 46 woodturners links, by name. Clicking on any name will bring up a set of beautifully photographed pieces.

Index of the American Woodturner

The current direct link is

www.woodturner.org/products/aw/index/AWindex_03_09.pdf, but it appears from the name that this may change as it is updated, so the best way to get there is to go to www.woodturner.org/products/aw/ and click the “Journal Index” tab on the left-hand side of the page (or the “can be found here” link in the third paragraph)

del Mano Gallery
www.delmano.com.

Ed Moulthrop
www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/moulth01.htm

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Moulthrop

A straightforward but relatively complete table of wood names www.woodturner.ca/wiw/woodnames.html

A commercial site with information on 45 wood species
www.arroyohardwoods.com/Departments/Lumber/Stock_Alphabetical.html

Paul Hinds, non-commercial site currently lists 694 different types of wood and pictures of those woods
www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/indextotal.htm

Woodturningonline.com
www.woodturningonline.com/Turning/Turning_articles.html

Carolina Mountain Woodturners Galleries
www.carolinamountainwoodturners.org/galleries/cmw/gallery_select.htm

2008

Steve Russell Articles
www.woodturningvideosplus.com/woodturning-education-articles.html

Association of Woodturners of Great Britain
www.awgbseminar.co.uk/index.htm

WoodCentral Articles
www.woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl#turning

Chicago Woodturners
www.chicagowoodturners.com/index.htm

Brian Clifford’s Turningtools
www.turningtools.co.uk

AAW Galleries
www.woodturner.org/gallery

Woodturning Design: Ask Dale
www.woodturningdesign.com/askdale

Darrell Feltmate
www.aroundthewoods.com

Wood Turning Center
www.woodturningcenter.org

Steve Russell on boiling
www.woodturningvideosplus.com/boiling-green-wood.html

and

Montgomery County Woodturners

of Montgomery County Maryland: A local chapter of the American Association of Woodturners