Meeting Minutes – September 7, 2024

Meeting Location: West Baton Rouge Museum, 845 Jefferson Ave., Port Allen

• Fellowship before meeting
• Collection of dues (Rick Albrecht) and selling of shirts and caps (Richard Robles)

Invocation and Pledge of Allegiance – Harold Choate

Welcome and Introduction of Guests 20 attending, 19 members, 1 visitor

Officer Reports:

• Vice-President – George Campagna- Thanks to Jason Allen/Behr Paint representative for today’s presentation. We were notified last week that SwampFest will be postponed this year. There has been a change in plans for the October Meeting. Richard Robles will fill us in in a few minutes. We’ll be at Terry Landry’s shop in November to hear Terry’s presentation on Furniture Design and Making. December’s meeting will be at Andrew Becnel’s shop. That will wrap up this year’s meetings.
• Secretary – Harold Choate- Our August meeting was at PMC with the St. Tammany club so the exact number of our members is difficult to determine. The meeting was well attended. Our Facebook page continues to have an active following. This too is difficult to understand because one day we will have over 100 followers, the next day may be 3. Someone somewhere probably knows how this works, but I’m not among that group. If you have anything you want to post just send me the pictures and I’ll get it on the page.
• Treasurer – Rick Albrecht- Rick is not attending today, but he sent a report. We have a balance of $3958.00. One check was written to Jim Landry. If you wish to have more detail, please contact Rick.
• Webmaster – Open
• Community Service – Bob Pace- We have one new project. We’re working with the Louisiana Arts and Science Museum downtown on their Egyptian Exhibit. We’re building 2 large platforms, 30 floating shelves and cartouches. Jim Landry is building 4 cartouches and a large number of small ones for sale in the gift shop. The platforms were delivered last week, 20 of the shelves were delivered Wednesday and Jim is working on the cartouches. Rick Albrecht is building 5 shelves and Keith Bryan is building 5 to complete the quantity of 30. Lee Owens advised we have 8 chests of drawers to provide for O’Brien House. The tentative delivery is before the end of the year. If you wish to participate in this let Lee know because O’Brien House would like to have a total of 24 more chests of drawers. We had talked about some work for IRIS House a couple of months ago. They were waiting for funding. Apparently, that has not happened because we haven’t heard from them. Richard invited the club members to contact Bob if they would be willing to assist him in his work. We need more members to become active with the club projects, so all the work does not fall on a few people. Jim Landry showed us the cartouches he made. He described the symbols used and their meaning. These will be used on some kind of scavenger hunt that is part of the Exhibit activities. Jim described the process used to make these. He used a CNC Laser to burn the pictures onto plastic laminate. Jim also showed the meeting pictures of a Community Service project the club did for Our Lady of the Lake Cancer Center in 2015. We built a welcome cart. The wheels were donated by Little Angels Foundations. The canopy is supported by PVC pipe bent by the club using the technique shown on YouTube. The cart is still in use after all these years. The U.S. Marine Corps contacted the club about building some items to use as awards. Jim met with a Major in the Marines and got details for each item. This is probably going to be an ongoing relationship.
• Education Outreach – Open

New and Ongoing Club Business

• 2024 Swampfest- We were advised the Iberville Parrish Welcome Center building is being renovated. Due to this the SwampFest is being pushed to April, 2025. Richard asked for all the birdhouse kits to be turned into him or George Campagna by the 21st of this month. They plan to do 2 SwampFest events next year, April 5 and the first weekend in October. The question is do we want to do both? This creates a conflict with the Baton Rouge Zoo event. Richard opened the floor for discussion. The questions are 1) Do we want to do both, 2) Do we want to do one and not the other, 3) Do we want to do the Zoo and one of the SwampFest dates? Richard emphasized we would need more volunteers regardless of our choice. The decision of the club is to do the April Zoo event and the October SwampFest date. That means the birdhouse kits made for this year’s SwampFest can be stored and used next year eliminating the need to build more. Harold Choate put in a plug for the Zoo experience emphasizing how significant it is for kids to use tools and have something that is theirs to take away from the time.
• Executive Meeting Update- It was decided the club needs to update the brochures and business cards used to advertise our organization. Lee Owens has volunteered to take care of doing this. The committee decided new clients should be approved prior to developing projects with them in order to avoid wasting the client’s time and the club’s time if they were not approved. Doing a better job of developing project plans was also discussed. Bob Pace has advised he will need support in doing drawings. This was going to be discussed with George Cenac to confirm he will be available for this. Jim Landry also offered to help in the event he was needed. The St. Tammany club has an outside source they use for doing this. If necessary, we would utilize this for our projects in order to get good plans to work with. Since we don’t have a meeting planned for October with the cancellation of the SwampFest it has been proposed that we have a Tool Swap on October 5. Mark Monistere has volunteered to check out BREC facilities that could be used for this. The Flea Market is not an option because of the way the manager treated us last year. There is a pavilion on Perkins Road that will accommodate 30-40 people and is inside and air conditioned. This is sufficient based on the attendance we had last year. The cost is $20 per hour, minimum 4 hours. This option was approved by the meeting. Geoff Michelli volunteered to cook Jambalaya again so we could have lunch while we gathered. Richard said he would change the website to reflect this decision. Richard Robles brought up an issue with the quality of the wood we’ve been getting for the birdhouse kits. Jim Landry has volunteered to check for sources of wood that is of a better grade. Comments were made by Art Miller and Harold Choate that the wood we’ve received is free and that their experience has been that the quality has not been an issue with them. Jim Landry’s idea is to find a sawmill that will be both cheaper and better than what we’ve been using.
• Nominating Committee- Lee Owens, Cody Henderson, Lee Soileaux and Richard Robles are the 2024 Nominating Committee members.

Members Questions/Concerns

Safety Topic– A video of idiots at work was shown provided by the resident idiot, Harold Choate.

Skill Topic: Behr Paint/Finishing Products – Jason Allen (Behr Rep)

Show-and-Tell

Adjourn

Please bring the following items to the meeting: