Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Summerland Rotary Gets Into Wood Turning!


President Doug Carnegie presents Rotary donation to Rick Cogbill & John Topham
 A big thank you to the Summerland Rotary Club for donating $3,000 towards Mercy Tech Mission's Woodturning Project in Mozambique. We so appreciate the support of our community!

The General wood lathe (pictured below) has already been modified for European voltage requirements and is currently en route to Mozambique, scheduled to arrive around April 25th. Rotary member John Topham will be travelling to Mozambique for the month of May to teach woodturning skills to some of the local men at the SAMM mission base near Chimoio.

General Wood Lathe
John demonstrating cutting techniques to Brad Denesiuk (L) and Bob Denesiuk (R)

John with some cutting tools he will bring to Mozambique. Behind him are
some of the artistic wooden bowls he is well-known for creating.
John is a master craftsman, and his famous exotic wooden bowls are popular items in art galleries around the Okanagan. We are thrilled that John is making himself available to not only arrange for a hi-quality lathe to be shipped to Mozambique, but to travel there himself to personally teach students on the proper care and use of the machine.
Pindurai, one of the young men we hope to train
for the wood lathe
If you would like to contribute to this or other Mercy Tech projects, please visit our website at http://www.mercytechmission.com/.

Mercy Tech Mission: Changing lives, one skill at a time.

3 comments:

  1. John might want to pack the tools in his luggage, versus carry-on... Someone I know ran into a small problem with carry-on...

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  2. I've already warned him! We certainly don't want to try that again...s'il vous plait.

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  3. Hello,
    I came across your website and found it very enjoyable. I just had a couple of questions so if you could e-mail me back that would be great!

    ReplyDelete