GETTING SHARP AT DEER PARK LUMBER

Their were 21 eager students on Saturday July 29th 2000, looking to sharpen their skills in the LEOSFA sponsored "Intro to Bandsaw Filing Course." Held at Deer Park Lumber in Tunkhannock, PA. Our three instructors for the course Vic Berge of New England Machinery, Bruce Moore of Wagner Lumber and Ed Chapman of Eagle Forest Products didn’t let them down.

The students split into 3 groups of 7 to allow for more personal interaction with each instructor. Then rotated approximately every 2-½ hours to each of the 3 workstations. Ed Chapman was setup in the filing room and covered grinding techniques and grinder setup. Ed really stressed the importance of grinder alignment, and then fielded questions from the students for their particular problems or could be problems, if a question wasn’t answered, it wasn’t asked.

The second station headed up by Bruce Moore was setup just outside the filing room. Bruce showed each student a complete breakdown and setup for both Hanchett and Armstrong swages. He also did the same for the Armstrong shapers. Bruce spent a lot of time showing his students what a proper swage should look like and also how to achieve a proper swage. Several students had more particular questions and Bruce was very obliging in sharing some of the Nuances of swage and shaper setup and I’m sure there were a lot of swages being adjusted Monday morning when our students returned to their shops.

Vic Berge of New England Machinery was instructing our 3rd portion of the course Leveling and tensioning Techniques. Vic’s session started upstairs in Deer Park’s training center where Vic and the students discussed the theory behind leveling and tensioning for approximately 45 minutes then moved down to the filing room for the practical portion of his instruction. At this point Vic not so carefully distorted one of Head Filer Ardie Loncosky’s headsaw’s and let the students take turns fixing it, many thanks go out to Ardie for enduring this process and also all the help he provided throughout the day.

All in all thanks to Deer Park Lumber, 3 great instructors, and 21 eager students. The course was a great success, and I’ve already received some calls for the next one. So watch your newsletters or check www.sawyersandfilers.org for future plans.

Jeff Lisk