Formation of the Gateway Chapter has been approved. As the name implies, the chapter will hold meetings and focus its activities in the greater St. Louis area, Eastern Missouri and Southern Illinois. It is my hope to hold our first meeting in the fall of 2009 followed by semi-annual meetings every fall and spring. I hope that participation in the chapter will be active and dynamic and that the schedule and agenda of the meetings will be member driven.
To this end, my first job as organizer is to ask for your help. Although I have a few ideas as to what I’d like for the group, my knowledge and experience is limited at best. A little personal history may be appropriate at this point. I’ve lived in the St. Louis area for only a couple of years and I have no shop or tools of my own. Most of what I know about woodworking in general and period furniture making in particular was learned from books and magazines, not making wood shavings. I did work briefly in a couple of production shops in Montana when I was fresh out of college many years ago. There I learned such classic 17th century furniture making skills as running a pneumatic random-orbital sander for eight hours a day and feeding 100 board-feet a minute into a three-phase planner the size of my old F350 pick up. Truth be told, I’m not a period furniture maker, I’m a period furniture lover with a lot of big ideas and dreams of making beautiful furniture in my own shop someday. Until then, it’s fair to say that the main reason I was interested in a Gateway chapter is that my wife got sick of hearing me talk about Goddard and Townsend—in short, I needed an outlet.
I will be contacting as many of you in the region as I can, but please don’t wait to hear from me first. If you’re interested in participating in the Gateway chapter, and more importantly, if you feel you have something to contribute, please contact me. Whether it’s a particular skill or talent, historical knowledge, familiarity with regional resources or something more general and mundane like event scheduling and record keeping I want to hear from you. There’s also a need for opinions, wisecracks, lessons from the shop and even stories involving personal feats of courage and victory in the face of insurmountable odds (like the time I conquered a 16-ounce barbecue bacon cheeseburger with mushrooms and onions—and I’ve got the cholesterol to prove it.)
As with the other chapters, all SAPFM members are welcome and encouraged to attend Gateway events. Although active membership in SAPFM is a requirement to join a chapter, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invite other woodworkers and lovers of period furniture to join us (I'll have plenty of SAPFM new membership forms on hand.) I have heard some object to joining a regional SAPFM chapter because they’re already active in other local woodworking clubs. I think you’ll find participation in chapter events complementary to those other clubs. And besides, can you ever really get too much woodworking? Although there are no dues to chapter membership, coffee and donuts are cheaper when bought in bulk—so get your friends from those other clubs to join SAPFM and help defray the costs.
If you’ve made it this far through my ramblings, then I look forward to hearing from you soon and meeting you all in the fall. For more information, comments or criticism please call someone else. If you can’t get a hold of them, you can reach me in this forum or at sapfmgateway@sbcglobal.net
Gerald Yungling
To this end, my first job as organizer is to ask for your help. Although I have a few ideas as to what I’d like for the group, my knowledge and experience is limited at best. A little personal history may be appropriate at this point. I’ve lived in the St. Louis area for only a couple of years and I have no shop or tools of my own. Most of what I know about woodworking in general and period furniture making in particular was learned from books and magazines, not making wood shavings. I did work briefly in a couple of production shops in Montana when I was fresh out of college many years ago. There I learned such classic 17th century furniture making skills as running a pneumatic random-orbital sander for eight hours a day and feeding 100 board-feet a minute into a three-phase planner the size of my old F350 pick up. Truth be told, I’m not a period furniture maker, I’m a period furniture lover with a lot of big ideas and dreams of making beautiful furniture in my own shop someday. Until then, it’s fair to say that the main reason I was interested in a Gateway chapter is that my wife got sick of hearing me talk about Goddard and Townsend—in short, I needed an outlet.
I will be contacting as many of you in the region as I can, but please don’t wait to hear from me first. If you’re interested in participating in the Gateway chapter, and more importantly, if you feel you have something to contribute, please contact me. Whether it’s a particular skill or talent, historical knowledge, familiarity with regional resources or something more general and mundane like event scheduling and record keeping I want to hear from you. There’s also a need for opinions, wisecracks, lessons from the shop and even stories involving personal feats of courage and victory in the face of insurmountable odds (like the time I conquered a 16-ounce barbecue bacon cheeseburger with mushrooms and onions—and I’ve got the cholesterol to prove it.)
As with the other chapters, all SAPFM members are welcome and encouraged to attend Gateway events. Although active membership in SAPFM is a requirement to join a chapter, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invite other woodworkers and lovers of period furniture to join us (I'll have plenty of SAPFM new membership forms on hand.) I have heard some object to joining a regional SAPFM chapter because they’re already active in other local woodworking clubs. I think you’ll find participation in chapter events complementary to those other clubs. And besides, can you ever really get too much woodworking? Although there are no dues to chapter membership, coffee and donuts are cheaper when bought in bulk—so get your friends from those other clubs to join SAPFM and help defray the costs.
If you’ve made it this far through my ramblings, then I look forward to hearing from you soon and meeting you all in the fall. For more information, comments or criticism please call someone else. If you can’t get a hold of them, you can reach me in this forum or at sapfmgateway@sbcglobal.net
Gerald Yungling
I live in Jackson, TN roughly a 4 hour drive south east of St. Louis. I have been a member of SAPFM for a few years now but mostly read the posts on the website and the annual publication. I have built Arts & Crafts as well as Shaker furniture. Depending on the schedule of my day job, and the dates for the Fall meeting, I could possibly make it to St. Louis, and I would be intrested in joining the Gateway Chapter.