ironman challenge

[Don Fluker]

Last year while viewing web sites of AAW member clubs, I viewed one that had something called Ironman challenge or something like that. I have been trying to find that club but have not had much luck.
Silicone Valley Woodturners has a news letter that has it listed on the front page but every time I try to read it my computer freezes up.
Does anyone have any idea how this works or can you tell me where I can get any more information about it?
Thanks

 

[Jeff Jilg]

Those are PDF files. I would recommend downloading them to your local hard disk then open them from there. To download a PDF:
- right click on the file
- select save to disk

 

[BigGuy]

Our Ironman challenge is an incentive program to get our members more involved in turning and in the club. Every year our Club President creates a list of types of turnings, one for every month.
For example:
January Turned Badges
February Turning under 2 inches
March Treen
April with bark
May Top
June Glued
July With Stem
etc.

He tries to make the categories fairly generic because he wants us to use our imagination and see what we come up with. He doesn't want and we don't want to see 30 clones of one form. All members are encouraged to make an item for each months Presidents Challenge. At the end of the year, all members who has completed a project for each month are awarded a special IronMan membership badge. We also have IronWomen too including my wife.
It has been fun to see how the members interpret the category for their turning. One highlight of the year is May when we have our "Top" night. It's fun to see a bunch of old guys on their knees spinning tops on the floor. We have contest for smallest and biggest top and longest spinning tops. One year we had one spin for over 19 minutes.

Lloyd Frisbee
Silicon Valley Woodturners
San Jose,CA

 

[john lucas]

We have been doing sort of the same thing but we base the project on the last months demo. They get 5 extra tickets to the end of the year drawing at out Christmas party. We've had some amazingly strong competition. This year we decided to divide it into Novice and Advanced so we have 2 2winner each month. The members decide which category they want in. So far we haven't had any advanced turners entering the novice category.

 

[rbabbittjr]

Our club tried to do a challenge of the month. The catagories corresponded to the categories of the local county fair. That way if a member turned a piece for the challenge they also had an entry for the fair.