Non-Exchange Wood Exchange
Brad in Ottawa
>After this year�s Central Santa, Central Santa himself, Ernie Miller came up with the idea of setting up a wood exchange to have fun year round. Ernie asked if someone would volunteer to draft a letter explaining our goals and wishes and how this wood thing would work. I thought that this sounded like an interesting project and wanted to learn more, so I volunteered.
After doing some research on the Internet, I found that gardening, quilting and arts forums commonly have Round Robin Exchanges. In their exchanges they aim to share new materials (i.e. seeds) or to complete group projects (i.e. quilts.)
(I immediately thought everyone could ship one of their round tuits, such as a 18th Century Walnut Secretary, to someone on the list for completion. :p )
If I understand correctly, Ernie hopes that this Wood Exchange would be an excellent opportunity to do the following:
- Grow our sense of community through sharing new types of wood or surplus wood with others in our community; and
- To inspire or challenge others to create something with a material that they might not otherwise have access to or have thought to use. Novel approaches or applications for wood could include: Tool handles, boxes, pens, hollow vessels, ornaments, inlay� the possibilities are endless!
What would make this different from other online-forum exchanges is that in order to participate you don�t have to trade wood. (Apparently some of us live in Wood Heck or Tropical Wood Heck! The Suburbs?)
By now your are probably asking �How will this No-Exchange Wood Exchange work???� Here�s a simple walkthrough:
Tell Ernie you are interested in participating and whether you are Flat or Round (think woodworking!)
Ernie will track all participants in his database.
Once the names have been assembled and randomly ordered you can volunteer to share something from your wood stash. Let Ernie know whether you are sharing something flat or round. After entering the request into the database it will spit out the next eligible recipient.
Send off your turning blank, burl, board, carving block, veneers or scales to the lucky recipient.
If you receive something please share the news of the arrival� hopefully you will also share what you plan to do with it and your project progress. End of commitment. Of course someone else will hopefully be kind enough to step forward to share from his or her stash!
If you would like to participate please respond by e-mail to Ernie at either one of these addresses: erniem@ksdot.org & erniem2u@joimail.com.
Hope you participate!
Brad
