Aug 06 meeting

The first person to address us (after the chairman’s introduction) was Leon Sadubin who had spent some time with Sandy and Paul Miller in reorganising Les Miller’s shed to make it representative of how Les would have liked it. The result of this was a surplus of some items that were going to be made available at the Henry Black Tool Sale on the following Sunday at Concord. Hopefully, some members would be able to acquire some tangible memory of Les.
The feature event was the Chair Show and Tell with Terry Gleeson being first out of the blocks. Terry had an original chair and was in the process of making a reproduction out of Beech. Terry was finding the cost of the Beech required to be quite a considerable amount.
David Buick showed us a chair that he built that was based on a design that he came across in England. It was not a reproduction but David was struck by the original’s lines and decided to incorporate them into his chair. The sloping back utilised laminations.
Alex Springall’s chairs both showed flair in design as well as interesting techniques in construction. The chair used laminations and bending to achieve its shape while the stool had a more sculptural quality.
Michael McGrath arrived with a mock-up chair and a bag that, like Mary Poppins’ bag, seemed to be bottomless as he pulled more and more pieces out of it to start assembling a chair. The assembly came to a stop with a dilemma that Michael has in making the final assembly. He kindly left us with the problem – has anyone solved it yet?
Rob Chapman brought along his well known and stylish Barcelona chair. Rob gave us some background on how he arrived at the design and also some insight into some of the techniques used such as the way the back slats were fitted and how he used an angle grinder to shape the seat. Each chair takes about 40 hours to complete.
Alan Perry took us to the break with a demonstration of seat weaving. Alan made it look easy! It seems that all you need is a bag of golf tees. Apparently the cane is becoming quite difficult to find and that sounds like a good enough excuse for my not attempting seat weaving!
Back from the break and Warwick Wright announced that the Association will take up an offer of space at the Dank Street Gallery in August 07. A subcommittee is being formed to manage the exhibit.
Warwick then proceeded to show us a much more attractive method of making a cane insert for a chair - buy it ready made! His chair was very simple and elegant with an inviting upholstered leather seat.
Peter Hunt’s chair was very elegant and light and yet very strong. His use of small square pegs to further hold his mortice and tenon joints was both functional and decorative and was admired by all.
Paul Barton’s contemporary style Rosewood dining chair was in the process of being partially disassembled and reassembled to improve certain aspects before the other seven chairs were made. The chair was originally a rush job that was finished the day before the 2005 Timber and Working with Wood Show.
Peter Hayes’ three legged chair had Peter’s trademark sculptural look to it. It is being used daily by Peter and looks well loved! It was made out of what appears to be Peter’s never ending supply of glorious Red Cedar. It impressed with its functionality.
Phil Lakes chairs demonstrated sound techniques that have proven to be extremely strong in practice. They used laminations to achieve strength. The back treatment was unusual and provided challenges as far as methods were concerned but the end effect was quite pleasing. The small pin at the top of the backrest was a neat touch.
Leon Sadubin showed some examples of a stacking chair that he made as a commission some time ago. It used torsion box construction with a top faced with leather. It was refreshing to hear someone of Leon’s calibre admit to "failures" or "shortcomings" in his design and fabrication and how he learned from them.

Also on show was a wonderful old Wolf belt sander, the likes of which we are never likely to see again. It worked and it looked so wonderfully solid – and no plastic in sight!