The second to last meeting of the 2017/18 year, with two presenters, was well attended. First were some announcements by President James, one of which is the OWA website decided to go AWOL.  Even with our best and brightest minds on the case, the domain hasn't yet been found.  So we have a new web address ottwwa.blogspot.ca  Note w replaces the first a in ottwwa.  But if you are reading this, congratulations, you found us! George Fouriezos was first up.  He steered left of woodworking to talk about 3D Printing in the Woodshop.  George has been playing around with a 3D printer for a little more than a year making everything from dog tags and signs to flasks and marking tools for woodworking, not to mention tools and parts for various machines.  George, as always, was able to keep a crowd of woodworkers entertained, informed, and engaged with a topic that didn't include any wood at all.  You can watch a similar presentation on George's w

The threat of another winter storm didn't keep the DIY hard OWA members at home.  First came a couple of announcements from Rob, one of which was a reminder to contact George if you are interested in developing an internet web page or making woodworking videos to post on the internet.  Details about this are at the bottom of this page. The floor was then turned over to Brian Greene to give his Five Strategies to Improve Your Sharpening .  With his years of sharpening both his own tools and ones for Lee Valley and others, as well as teaching numerous classes on the subject, there are few people who are as well versed in the dark art of getting that "scary sharp" edge on your favorite plane blade or chisel.  This was not so much a how-to evening although we ventured down that rabbit hole for a bit.  It was more of ideas of how to help improve your sharpening like "the more often you do it the less time it takes" or "attitude is everything, it's r

Jack's presentation included gems like how you can use a Canadian tape measure as a metric-to-imperial converter, when to burn an inch, and why you should never peen the loose hook fast.  His newly hired apprentice explained away all of Jack's errors. An active and engaging Show-and-Tell followed. [left] Bazz executed an off-scale restoration of an No. 3 for his grandson.  [right]   Modeled after Paul Sellers's design, Rob Suarez showed his highly accurate shooting board for square and mitered ends. And we heard from the metal gallery... [left]   Mark's marking knife was his favourite all-time tool of the week this week. [right and below] Nick caught us up on some recent accomplishments in his forging.

Text and Photos by Ken Dixon (which is the unfortunate reason there are no photos of Ken presenting his box and jigs). The February meeting's main presenter was Bazz on Chip Carving but first was Rob with a couple of announcements.  First, a reminder of the Kingston Wood Artisans Woodworking Symposium 2018.  With the great success of last year this year is shaping up to be even better.  The Early Bird $45 registration fee ends on the 28th of February.  After that date it goes up to $65.  For all the information go to https://kwoodartca.wordpress.com/special-events/symposium-2018/ .  The other announcement was about woodworking questions.  If you have a question that you would like the group to weigh in on, you have three options: One is to write it down on the clip board that is at every meeting.  Two is to email it to ottawa.woodworkers.assoc@gmail.com.  Three is to enter it into the comment section of the latest Ken Dixon Recap, like the one below.  If t

Judging from the turnout and general enthusiasm from the floor, Marty Schlosser's presentation on Dust Collection was resoundingly appreciated.  As Ken Dixon, Past President, was unable to attend, images and a report on the night's activities is not available for January's meeting.  But Marty has given us permission to post his PowerPoint presentation, making his Dust Collection slides available for downloading.  If clicking on the prior link doesn't do it, try entering "https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xj3RKfe_akwL6-CWm0aKiv7Ko1Y90_j-/view?usp=sharing" without the quotes into a browser's address field.  Yeah, I hope the link works too.

More than 50 people decided to kick off the holiday season by coming out to the annual OWA social. With lots of yummy treats provided by the executive and some very talented members everyone enjoyed something to eat as well as coffee and soft drinks. As in years past there was no structure to this year's gathering so everyone was able to move around visiting, checking out the show and tell items, making deals on that tool they have been looking for, and just generally enjoying a couple of hours talking all things woodworking. Congratulations to Ken Dixon, this year's recipient of the Danny Proulx Award with Brian Greene making the presentation.  Ken has been an active member of the OWA since there were no more than 20 members.  He has been a member of the executive in almost all rolls including President and currently sits as Past President.  He continues to take care of the soft drinks and writes the monthly

Workbenches, the name of the game for the 50 people who attended the November meeting. For the main presentation, Rob, with the help of slides, gave a lot of great information about work benches, from their history, to all the different work holding devices, both old and new, and different accessories to be used on your shop bench. He also had his newly completed Split Top Roubo bench set up and discussed its design and advantages. After Rob's presentation, Gary, using Rob's bench and Roger's Moxon vise, gave a demonstration on how, over the past 40 yrs, he has hand-cut through-dovetails. After the break Jocelyn inaugurated a new feature of meetings with his Screw-up-and-Tell item. An attempt to make some pulls for drawers did not turn out as well as he had hoped. Lesson? Measure all the hole-spacings when upgrading pulls, not just the first one. It was great to see so many peop