Finishing Wars

The Guild meeting of October 12 featured four live ongoing demonstrations on finishing. Four separate groups were selected. One group was demonstrating how to clean and "revitalize" an antique chair. Len Barnes and his team showed how simply cleaning with a safe (100 year old formula) cleaning solution can bring an old piece of furniture back to life. He explained that the last thing you want to do is to have to re-finish an antique piece. This can often ruin the value of the piece, so it is much better to simply clean a piece. Any necessary repairs should be undertaken with skill using original methods.

Three other teams were tasked with sanding and applying a finish to some "Copper Beech" samples. First of all teams were provided with sandpaper. Not all groups got the same sand paper, and were instructed to do the best they could with the materials provided. Each group was also given three different finishing materials to apply, including Watco Natural, Minwax Wipe On Poly and Minwax plus another Minwas product.

All the teams spend much time sanding and preparing the wood before applying their finishes. This extra care made a big difference on the final look. Surprisingly, all of the finishes looked vary close with some discrete variations is lustre. It was a bit difficult to compare the three products in terms of how they "popped the grain" of the wood as each piece was different but again all three were very similar.

This was a very informative meeting when you could observe how each of the teams was progressing throughout the night. Unfortunately the finishes did not all dry completely by the end of the meeting, but there was sufficient evidence to see how they differed when you could view each one first hand. For anyone wondering what certain finished looked like and how they are prepared, this meeting was very enlightening.

Announcing Our NEW On-Line Membership Program

As of September 2005 the Guild has implemented a new On-Line Membership Sign-up feature on our new website. The Guild executive encourages EVERYONE who has a computer connected to the Internet to please begin using this feature.

The guild executive believe it represents the next step in modernizing our guild for the benefit of all members. We thank Jim Barker our outgoing VP Membership for his support of this program and Lauren Vanden Dungen your new VP Membership is looking forward to working with all of you this year on this initiative.

The new Online Sign-up will streamline our membership operation and will solve many of the challenges we have had in the past. Your cooperation and help are required to make this happen. Our online membership system is really simple to use and it gives us very easy access for mailings will also promote better communications and financial management.

The new On-Line Sign up section uses a banking institution called PayPal as our payment gateway. PayPal is a secure banking business with over 78 million customers in 50 countries. Many of you already are familiar with PayPal if you have been an EBay buyer or seller.

Here’s how it works. Go to the guild’s website at http://www.viwg.com. In the left column you will see an area called “Members Login”. If this is your first time, you will need to Sign Up, you do that by clicking the “Sign Up Here” text and fill out the information on the page that comes up.

If you are not a PayPal member, the system will automatically take you to where you sign-up to PayPal. Like any other banking institution they will require geographical information from you, as well as your credit card information. Remember, this is a secure website, so information you provide should be kept private to yourself.

As a PayPal member, the transaction of taking your guild membership fee from your credit card via the PayPal account and depositing the money in the PayPal account of the Guild will happen behind the scenes. Your next credit card statement will show a withdrawal from PayPal on it just as any other purchase would be presented.

Once you are signed up online, you can easily keep your information up to date – and you can do it anytime you need to. One year after joining the Guild On-Line, you will receive an email that says your membership with the Guild has expired, and will ask you to renew your membership! It really is easy, you’ll see. Lots of benefits here – timely information, no paper and trees being wasted and no additional volunteer time being consumed.

If you do NOT have a computer or credit card, don’t worry, we will continue to take a cheque for payment and your members information will manually be added into the On-Line Guild Member database. We are hoping to provide access for our members right at future meetings

If you have any concerns or questions about the new Sign-up area, please email them to Knecht@shaw.ca and thanks for helping to make the Guild both a progressive organization and a great place to meet talented people.

Your Guild Executive

As part of our ongoing efforts to keep members and the general public informed, our new website features frequently updated and well-organized content along with, user-friendly online enrolment.
VIWG members (and future members) will now be able to signup and pay membership dues online. Becoming a member has never been easier.

The Vancouver Island Woodworkers Guild prides itself on providing superior service to our members and our website is an extension of that commitment. We invite you to browse our new site, and share with us your thoughts and comments.