December 2017 Membership Meeting

Annual TGoM holiday gathering Sunday, December 3 at the CSPS Hall in St. Paul, MN

Join your Guild of Metalsmiths friends and families for our annual holiday gathering at the CSPS Hall in St. Paul (address 385 Michigan St, just at the corner of West 7th and Western). The hall, as normal, will open at 11:00 am for us to start setting up tables. Please come and help, as more hands make lighter work for all. After the tables are setup, we usually share hors d’ouvres, so bring your favorites if you wish. Meeting champion Mike Frattalone promises there will be a few bottles of wine leftover from the Madness also available.
The business meeting is next on the agenda, along with election of new officers and board members. Your participation is key to this. That leads into show and tell and ‘Iron in the Hat,’ and probably an impromptu auction. By then, we’ll all have worked up an appetite to sit down to our always delightful holiday potluck.
Start working on your ‘Iron in the Hat’ items now and note that the theme is miniature metalworking tool ornaments. See rules for this event below.
If you’re a first-timer to this event, just go upstairs at the front of the building when you get there. An elevator entrance is also located on the side just off the parking lot. Bring your family!
Any questions about this meeting can be answered by contacting meeting champion Mike Frattalone at icemanfratt@aol.com.
— Mark Lockwood, Program Committee Chair

2017 ‘Iron in the Hat’ theme is miniature metalworking tool ornaments!

The theme will be miniature metalworking tool ornaments. Forget sugarplums I have visions of a tree decked out in miniature tongs, hammers, anvils, dividers, shears, saws, travelers, etc. Sort of like Santa’s elves went on strike and hung their tools in protest versus making one more Teddy Ruxpin (or whatever the kids can’t live without this year).
The rules are:
1) You have to make it yourself, or be a representative of a Guild member who made it but couldn’t make the party. No bringing in something mass produced and purchased.
2) It has to resemble a metal working tool of some sort.
3) It has to be able to hang on a Christmas tree without falling off the branch, pulling the tree down, etc.
4) It shouldn’t present any more of a hazard than normal ornaments (e.g. no forges with real burning coal, no razor sharp edges, no tombstone welder with real arc, etc).
I would also suggest that it take an hour or less to make your item as this is supposed to be a novelty, a metal sorbet to cleans the craft person’s palate, as it were.
Reminder on how this works:
the short version is if you bring an item for the exchange you will go home with someone else’s work. The names of who gets whose item are randomly drawn. If you find yourself really enjoying making mini-tools and don’t want to stop at one, you might want to make an extra one for the auction so those folk who either didn’t get lucky in the drawing or weren’t able to make something will have a chance to deck their halls with something better than holly.
— Martin Pansch, TGoM President

About the CSPS Hall…
The C.S.P.S Hall is the longest serving Czech-Slovak hall in continuous use in the United States. In 1977 The C.S.P.S. Hall was declared a National and State Historic Site. Visit their website at http://www.sokolmn.org/ to learn all about this very interesting place.