October 24 Presentation by Randy Acker
6:00: Social time for visiting with other members
6:30: Meeting begins with Guild business, announcements and Show-N-Tell (Theme to be announced)
7:15ish: Presentation by Randy Acker begins
Presentation: Making Wood and Resin Tables: Keys to Success
Our presenter for the October 24 meeting will be Guild member Randy Acker. Randy is a largely self-taught woodworker who grew up around tools and loved using them, but never really had time to devote to woodworking until well after he retired. He doesn’t specialize in any one thing, having made cabinets, lamps, small boxes, mirror frames, and serving boards but he especially enjoys making tables. About four years ago he got interested in using resin to build tables when he had a beautiful table size piece of wood with voids and natural edges. He was fortunate to attend a resin table workshop held by Cam Anderson of Black-Tail Studio in Portland OR where he learned a lot of the fundamentals necessary to work successfully with wood and resin. He’s been regularly building tables since then. He has shown his work at Gallery of Ocean Shores, The Island Gallery and Museum Contempo. He currently sells his work at Childhood’s End Gallery in Olympia and Rectangle Gallery in Centralia, in addition to taking on commissioned work.
Randy’s presentation will cover table layout, slab preparation, mold construction, mixing resin, use of pigments and dyes, pouring and monitoring resin, planing the table top, and prepping the top for finishing. He will cover the tools he uses and talk about the products he has found that have worked well for him.
Anyone who has questions is welcome to contact Randy at acker.randy@gmail.com. He is happy to consult on any project. While he doesn't have a website he occasionally posts pictures to Instagram using echorockwoodworks.
Here is Randy's handout showing resources he uses to do his resin work
Resin Table Resources 2.docx
Here is Randy's MS Powerpoint slide deck he used during his presentation (Note, it is large, over 75MB)
Making a Wood and Resin Table - Powerpoint 2.pptx
