AAW Symposium - Tacoma 1999

Chapter Collaborative Challenge Entry

Glendale Woodturners Guild

Photo supplied by GWG

Photo: Phil Pratt

"The GWG Lathe"

COLLABORATION

An Exciting and Rewarding Challenge

The American Association of Woodturners holds a national symposium each year where woodturners from all over the world congregate to learn more about turning and to enjoy the fellowship of those with a passion for creating lathe work. One of the highlights of the weekend long series of workshops is an Instant Gallery, where members bring and display their best work. In recent years, a chapter collaboration challenge has been an added feature.

The ground rules for the collaboration challenge this year were:

• Any turned object, functional or not
• Six inch cube minimum size
• Three foot cube maximum size
• 40 lb. weight limit
• All collaboration participants must sign their work
• Six participant minimum, with a desire for as many chapter members as possible

The Glendale Woodturners Guild, an AAW chapter in the greater Los Angeles metro-politan area, decided to undertake a chapter collaboration for the 1999 AAW Symposium. Starting in January to find a suitable subject, it took six months to complete the project. An undertaking of this magnitude is not something done in a short period of time, and was no small challenge.

Several candidates for a project were considered, but the idea of a lathe was quickly agreed upon. We thought that designing and producing a lathe, all out of turned wood, would be a unique eye-catching piece.

Once the subject was selected, the task of designing and creating drawings for the lathe and each subassembly was accomplished. From there, individuals who would turn and produce each part volunteered and were given their assignment. After several months of creating all the parts, including figuring out the techniques and methods required to achieve the desired results, such as threading the tailstock quill, it was time to put all the pieces together.

The assembly process was a methodical task, figuring out how to mate parts produced by different people. We were fortunate to have originally thought out most fit and interface issues. Problems that weren't foreseen did not turn out to be major ones. Having some members with engineering and technical backgrounds was a significant advantage.

After all the pieces were assembled, the end product was more amazing than had ever been anticipated. Thirty-two craftsmen had used thirty-one fine hardwoods and a wealth of experience and craftsmanship, and a good measure of enthusiasm, to create a product we felt was visually a jewel, mechanically true, and technically a masterpiece.

In addition to the great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction the participants felt, they learned a number of things from the collaborative process.

• When a group bounces a number of ideas around, positive participation will tend to produce better ideas and creative solutions than separate individuals achieve.
• In working together, new techniques and methods are learned from fellow team members.
• In dealing with challenging and untried tasks, team members backstop each other during the process to think out steps that will prevent mistakes and disastrous errors.

What a satisfying and rewarding experience - can it be done again and as successfully? That's a challenge to which the Glendale Woodturners Guild looks forward.

Did we win? Oh my, the competition exceeded what anyone anticipated and as one speaker remarked, "This year is an improvement over last year by at least ten-fold." It truly was a most outstanding array of impressive projects from across the country. No, we didn't place, but we still feel like a winner. --Bill Haskell

 
Photo: Roger Austin