Big Island Ukulele Guild
Minutes of March meeting 3/8/2014
To view all meeting pictures, click HERE
Aloha BIUG members.
We had a well-attended guild meeting at Bob Gleason’s Kurtistown shop this past Saturday. Here are the highlights.
First, mahalo nui loa to Bob and Anne for hosting another of our BIUG gatherings. And kudos to Bob for organizing an interesting and useful project – his nut string spacing marking jig.
General Business
Secretary/Treasurer/Webmaster Tom Russell reported we have $3,118.64 prior to today’s membership dues collection and T-Shirt blow-out sale.
Membership Info
We have a large number of new members this year, which is great news. However a number of our current members have not paid their dues for 2014. Please try to get this done so we can start planning 2014 activities. Our website now provides PAYPAL to make your contributions easy.
We also have some members that did not pay last year, too. We presume the non-payers no longer wish to be involved in the guild and we will be dropping them from our email list at the end of March.
Meetings & the new “Builder’s Workshops"
A number of members have mentioned the challenge of having only 4 meetings a year. Missing one means you don’t attend a meeting for half a year! To address this, a number of ideas were discussed:
- Increase the number of meetings to 6.
- Add a couple “Builder’s Workshops" throughout the year. The idea of this is to have a hands-on project at a shop that requires more time than available at our meetings (a half to full day session). A number of ideas have been presented (and we are still soliciting input) on the BIUG Forum page in the BIUG Members Only section. Some project possibilities are a radius sanding board, a stationary belt sander attachment for small projects (mini-thickness sander), a side bender and a neck mortise-tenon jig. Several of these projects can be viewed on our webpage in the UGH - Exhibition 2013 folder in the Gallery section.
- Continue the “social lunches" on the East and West sides as desired.
For now, we will keep the 4 meetings per year and add a couple of Builders’ Workshops between meetings. Lunch gatherings will continue on an ad-hoc basis. Comments are welcome! The best way to communicate is via the Forum.
2014 Ukulele Shows
Bob Gleason will be taking over the ukulele show display case design. He will probably hold a design session and a special Builders’ Workshop to construct the cases.
Woodley discussed the Waimea show opportunity at the Kahilu Theatre. It would be held for 3-4 days during the annual Waimea Ukulele and Slack Key Guitar Institute in November. We will need a few members willing to help out for this show.
BIUG Logo-wear
We’ve decided to get out of the t-shirt business. T-shirts, tanks and sleeve-less T’s will have a reduced price until they’re gone. In Saturday’s ‘Fire sale’, we sold 37 shirts! There’s still a number of small, medium and XXL available. Once the remaining shirts are gone, t-shirts will be ordered on a pre-paid, bulk order basis. Hats will still be available.
Mike Perdue’s Kanikapila
Mike mentioned it was an excellent start with 16 people showing up for the kick-off meeting and 5 more signing up via email. Nice work!
Guild of American Luthiers
GAL is holding a symposium the 3rd week of July. Woodley will be moderating a panel of ukulele experts as well as hosting an ukulele building presentation. Kimo Hussey will be playing at the event.
Show & Tell
PLEASE BE CONSIDER OF ITEMS PASSED AROUND AT SHOW & TELL!
Several attending members provided ukulele projects and jigs for the show and tell. Unfortunately, one of the ukuleles was damaged as it was passed around, so we’ll have to reconsider how the show and tell is arranged and handled.
- Dick Wagner showed a simple solution to increasing work height or a quick step stool with ‘height boxes.’
- Bob Gleason shared an ukulele with the convertible Low-G/High-G string saddle which was discussed at the December meeting and at the UGH workshop.
- Woodley shared a recent ukulele he built.
- Chris Stewart showed how the backside of a utility blade makes a great saddle shaper. Tom Parse added that trimming a shape into the back makes a good nut shaper too.
- Tom Parse shared an curly lemon gum eucalyptus ukulele.
- Jim Skibby shared his recent ukulele.
- Chris shared his latest baritone ukulele with a nifty magnetic access port in the back.
Next Meeting
The next meeting will be Saturday, June 14th at Woodley’s shop. Details to come.
DEMO
Bob Gleason led the group in making a jig to make accurate and repeatable nut slots.
Tom Russell - BIUG Secretary/Treasurer
Chris Stewart - President