Big Island Ukulele Guild
Minutes of August meeting 8/30/2014
Aloha BIUG members.
We had another great meeting Saturday at Woodley and Julie White’s house in Naahelu – once again the southern-most gathering of ukulele builders in the United States.
GENERAL BUSINESS
A VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM CHRIS STEWART
December we will be casting our vote for a new President, Vice President and Secretary. Please consider stepping up and volunteering for one of these positions. Tom has agreed to continue maintaining the website but he’d like to pass secretary duties to someone else. Per Tom, “being Secretary and the web guy is a bit much. Frankly, I’m a terrible secretary!”.
Treasurer’s Report & Membership Info
BIUG Secretary/Treasurer Tom Russell reported we have $3,629.95 in the bank. Tom also discussed an analysis of club income (basically dues) and outflows.
Membership now stands at 60 members. Please remember that the membership voted to increase membership fees for 2015 to $30/year to help offset costs associated with shows, materials for meeting demos/projects and builder’s workshops. As an aside, the membership rolls will be cleaned up at the end of this calendar year with members not in good standing for the past 2 years removed from the mailing list and forum.
2014 Ukulele Shows - WAILOA
Back of the envelope count suggests we’ll have at least 36 ukulele’s in this year’s Wailoa Show. Great news!
Bob presented numerous items regarding the show as listed below:
- Setup is on Tuesday morning prior to the show
- Alan will provide opening night music
- Show Kanikapilas will be on October 10th and 24th
- Ukulele Building demonstration will be held from noon to about 3pm on Oct. 17th
- A pre-show event with numerous musicians will be held at the Shark’s Coffee Shop on the last Friday of September from 5pm to 9pm. Doug Powdrell and Mike Perdue volunteered to help set up.
- The hurricane put the kibosh on the plexiglass cases so…there will be NO CASES for the show.
- Dave and Chris Stewart volunteered to get and deliver the opening night refreshments. There will be light pupus served periodically throughout the evening. This is unlike last year when the food was pretty much gone very early.
- Instruments that are sold because of the show are to donate 10% of sales to the Wailoa Center for hosting the event. There will be no donation to BIUG this year.
- There will be an instrument drop-off at Sam’s Holualoa Gallery. Contact Sam for details.
- Uke’s will be given away at the event again this year. Brian of Keirnan’s Music has made a donation to the cause. Mahalo Brian!!!
- An ukulele will be given away as a promotion of the event on radio station KWXX
- Two ukelele awards will be given,
- “Best in Show” - nominated by all visitors and presented during the show
- “Artisan’s Choice Award” - nominated by BIUG membership and presented at the holiday party & meeting in December
- Le'a would like to “reignite” the Facebook page. She will connect with Tom Russell to “make it so”.
- Bob has decided to do the program and will be contacting all presenters to get information necessary for the display card and program.
- Mike Perdue has volunteered to create short videos of any show ukulele. The video could/should show the instrument being played or could just have some commentary about the uke itself. A QR code on the program and/or display card would pop the visitor over to the video page on our website to have a real-time multi-media presentation of the instrument they are looking at. This is a great opportunity to discuss ukulele and to improve sales! Contact Mike for more info.
2014 Ukulele Shows - WAIMEA
The Waimea show is still a go as of today. The show will run from November 12th to the 23rd and coincides with the Slack Key Guitar event. Gary Cassel and Larry Montero are taking point.
Builder’s Workshops
The mortise and tenon jig workshop was delayed for lots of reasons. Please stay tuned for more info and thanks for your patience.
Group Ukulele Build Project
This will likely be discussed at greater length at the December meeting. Info from the June meeting is presented below to remind everyone just what this is all about…
A discussion about building ukuleles in a workshop was discussed at length. Given we are a builder’s guild, members thought a workshop where builder’s can get together and build their own ukuleles would promote club camraderie and offer insights on how to build from other memebrs.
Tom Russell will take point in forming a small committee to work out the details. It will require a number of volunteers to offer their shop so we can get good participation across the island. Please contact Tom with questions, ideas, a desire to help or offer up your shop for the cause, etc.
SHOW & TELL
- Chris shared a jig
- Mike showed a Concert Ukulele with a removable back. He used this to test various bracing methods and such.
- Bob showed 2 ukuleles and discussed the use of “Artist’s Tape” for masking off or template use
- Woodley shared his “cookie monster bite” cut-away
- Jenna (newest member!) shared her ukulele
- Sam shared an ukulele and discussed the use of Emmett’s finish; a rub on/wipe off product.
DEMO
Following an amazing lunch (thank you Julie and all that brought goodies!), Woodley, with an assist from Dennis Lake, gave a demo of Liberon Finishing Oil.
NEXT MEETING
Tom Russell - BIUG Secretary/Treasurer