February 17-22, 2020 – The IWCS 2020 Southeast Regional Winter Woodfest at the Lake Yale Baptist Conference Center, Eustis, Florida, is the most attended US IWCS meeting.
The meeting agenda had classes, workshops, technical sessions and demonstrations scheduled. You can make a small finished project to take home. Regis Miller gave a separate, 2-day long wood identification course during the meeting.
Plenty of wood was available to buy either directly off the mill during the week, or at the wood auction all day Thursday. We had a mill on site and sold a log or part of a log and cut it to your specifications. See a log you like and negotiate the price and cut dimensions with the on-site volunteer IWCS sawmill sales person. Last year, we had western red cedar, sycamore, recovered sunken cypress logs and an enormous camphor root ball, which was cut into large bowl blanks and slabs.
Silent auctions were held daily from Monday through Thursday, where donated items from our sponsors and hundreds of pieces of rare/interesting pieces of wood from our members were auctioned. One of our members found a source of rosewood recovered from a marimba/xylophone company in Indiana. If the rosewood had any defect, such as a knot, the company cut it out of the bar. These cutoffs are perfectly sized for small turning projects like pens and ornaments.
The craft auction was on Wednesday evening. Items for the craft auction are hand-crafted, homemade, woodworking tools or exceptional/rare wood donated by our members. Members brought crafts to display in the auditorium. Tables were available and limited sales of hand crafted items allowed.
Depending on interest, we had an informal group trip to a local oyster/seafood restaurant in Eustis. Lake County Farmers’ and Flea Market (10 minutes from Lake Yale) was held every Thursday morning, and Renninger’s Farm and Flea Market in nearby Mount Dora was open Saturday to Sunday.