Tips: Broken Parts By Don Lund

Often while handling or transporting carvings, fragile pieces such carved animal antlers or fish fins may be broken. One problem in repairing broken carvings is that they are likely to break again at the same high stress point. By using a 1/64 drill bit and drilling a hole in your carving on each side of the break, a fine 1/64 inch brass rod can be inserted between the two pieces to strengthen the fragile area. This rod can be glued in with super glue to reinforce the high stress area to help it from breaking again.

Please send me your carving TIPS and I will put them in our newsletter. Send to: NEIWCarver@cfu.net

Dues Were Due

Dues were due in September. If not paid this month, your membership will be cancelled and you will not received the next newsletter. $10 per person or $12 per family. Pay at the meeting or send to:
Roger Beane
825 7th Ave NE
Oelwein IA 50662-1331
Make checks payable to NEIA Woodcarvers

March Carving Session
Saturday, March 20th 9 a.m.
Waterloo Center for the Arts
Hurwich Room - 2nd Floor

Leader: Sid Sidler and Dave Kaiser
Project: Carving for the Raffle

Sid has some projects for us to do on his carving arm work holders. There will be no cost for these as he intends for you to donate the finished project to the April Iowa State Show raffle. There will be just one work holder design used at the Saturday session.

Dave will bring various clamps, various bench hooks and his homemade system for holding bowl blanks. He'll have bench dogs, vises, & jaw clamps and explain how he uses them in his carving. He will also bring a couple of shaving horses, draw knives, spokeshaves and scrapers with some small diameter sticks for people to work on the shaving horses. He'll have some rough basswood bowl blanks for you to work on too. You will have a chance to try out a power chisel. Dave says, "It really saves my wrists when I'm carving bowls or larger projects."

A great time to work on things for the raffle. Bring whatever you are working on.

FYI: The summer issue of the WoodCarving Illustrated magazine will have an article written by Laverne (Sid) Sidler on how to make a carving arm work holder much like the one we will use at the carving session. There will be another article in the fall issue on how to make a portable carving bench which utilizes the carving arm and can also be set up to use as a carving table.



March Club Meeting
Sunday, March 21st, 2 to 4 p.m.
Waterloo Center for the Arts

Speaker: Sid Sidler and Dave Kaiser
Subject: Demonstration & Discussion Of Carving Devises

Sid will bring several different work holder designs along with a description on methods to mount wood carving projects on the work holders. He will emphasize that using a work holder generally enhances safety and allows the carver to utilize both hands for better control of the tools and thus better results.

Dave will share how he uses many carving devises to aid in his carving.