This is the first in a series of articles exploring the 40 year history of the San Diego Fine Woodworkers Association
Origins
The San Diego Fine Woodworkers Association was founded in 1981 by Lynn Rybarczyk. Inspired by displays of woodworking in the Bay Area, Lynn was motivated to present the idea of creating a fine woodworking exhibit to the Southern California Exposition. The Exposition staff agreed to develop an exhibit as long as there was an active community woodworking organization to sponsor it.
By coincidence, the very next month San Diego’s first retail store dedicated to serving woodworkers, The Cutting Edge, held its grand opening. With the approval of the manager, Chuck Masters, Lynn set up a card table at the store and began to sign up the original members of what was to become the San Diego Fine Woodworkers Association.
Jim Cherry was the first president, followed a couple months later in that office by Lynn Rybarczyk. Richard Griebe, the first newsletter editor, held the first board meeting at his home. In June 1982, Lynn and Chuck became the co-supervisors of the first annual show, initially called The Southern California Expo Fine Woodworking Exhibit. It displayed 45 pieces selected from 95 entries, all submitted by SDFWA members. The show was such a success that Fine Woodworking Magazine gave it a multi-page spread, and it was also covered by other woodworking magazines.
There were name changes – the Southern California Exposition became the Del Mar Fair, and then the San Diego County Fair. SDFWA started as San Diego Fine Woodworking Association, but Fine Woodworking Magazine objected, and our name was modified to San Diego Fine Woodworkers Association. However, we were off to a great start.
Design in Wood Exhibition
The Design in Wood Exhibition became a regular event – the 38th annual staging being held in 2019. It gained national prominence in woodworking circles, and inspired other guilds, including the Orange County Woodworkers. It has also been a significant source of public exposure and advertising for SDFWA over the years, with Fair attendance reaching 1.6 million people in 2017. The next article in this series will focus entirely on this very important part of SDFWA’s history.
General Meetings, Presentations, and Newsletters
By November 1981 regular meetings were being held at local public schools or businesses. Attendance at the first meeting was 68. Many of the SDFWA’s now-familiar activities started very early in our history. General meetings with presentations on woodworking topics, a swap meet for buying and selling woodworking tools and equipment, the tool raffle, a woodworking library and more have been happening since our first years. Larger venues became required as membership increased, first St. Mark’s Church in Clairemont, and then for many years at the Al Bahr Shrine building near Rockler in Kearny Mesa. We look forward to getting back to holding our General Meetings once the COVID19 pandemic has subsided.
A bi-monthly newsletter has been published since 1982, and these old copies provide interesting insights to SDFWA’s early activities. The first newsletters were typed, with hand-drawn titles and illustrations. In 1998 Lynn Rybarczyk made sure we scanned all the older printed copies, and – along with the newsletters produced with computers – we have a nearly complete collection in the SDFWA archives.
A snippet from the March 1982 newsletter – it could be just yesterday…
There have been many interesting presentations at our General Meetings – both local personalities and visiting woodworkers. In addition, Lynn arranged for a visit in October 1982 from Art Carpenter with an evening seminar on “The Espenet Style”, the precursor to what would become an annual Fall Seminar event for SDFWA. There have been presentations by nationally known woodworkers – including Sam Maloof, Tage Frid, Bob Flexner, Michael Dresdner, and many of the editors from Fine Woodworking magazine. Plus Frank Klausz has visited San Diego three times.
One memorable meeting was for SDFWA’s 25th anniversary in September, 2006. Roy Underhill of The Woodwright’s Shop was the featured speaker – and we hosted our largest meeting ever. Around 300 people turned out to hear Roy talk about his passion for hand-tool woodworking, and to watch his demonstrations, including chopping through a tree trunk with a wicked sharp axe.
Tours of All Sorts
Woodworkers love to share, and Shop Tours started early SDFWA’s history. We have toured many SDFWA members’ shops, along with local woodworking related businesses. Seeing examples of how to utilize small spaces, drooling over the equipment in large woodworking businesses, watching demonstrations of special tools or techniques, or getting the inside scoop from vendors and suppliers has provided a wealth of woodworking knowledge for SDFWA members over the years. We have also organized bus tour field trips to places like the Gamble House, the Getty Museum, and Sam Maloof’s home and workshop. We haven’t done this recently, but if there’s enough interest we can certainly put together something to entice our members.
Membership and Sponsors
SDFWA membership grew steadily through the 1980s and 1990s reaching a peak of over 1600 members in 2003. While many woodworkers have come and gone, there are some of the original members who are still active today. In addition to Lynn, Ed Gladney, Harry Baldwin, Chuck Meacham, Del Cover, Russ Filbeck, Bob Stevenson, and Doug Parker all joined SDFWA in its first years. Plus Gary Anderson has been an SDFWA member since 1992.
SDFWA sponsors – local suppliers catering to woodworkers – who also provide discounts to SDFWA members, has been a membership perquisite since our beginnings. Some of these generous businesses – along with many national woodworking publications – also sponsor awards at the Design in Wood Exhibition. Earlier businesses (which aren’t around anymore) included The Cutting Edge, The Woodworkers Store, Craftsman Studio, American Furniture Design Company, and Cut and Dried Hardwood. Recent examples include Rockler which has donated door prizes to our Fall Seminars, Frost Hardwood Lumber Company who has donated wood for out sponsor appreciation plaques, Strata has donated wood for the children’s chairs built at the Fair, and TH&H which has donated wood for projects and hosted our Board meetings for many years.
There is a long-running trend with SDFWA memberships; we have always had a lot of “churn” or short-term members who presumably join for sponsor discounts, or to enter Design in Wood, or to attend the Fall Seminar. But each year we seem attract around 30 people who go on to become regulars. Some of them are names you may recognize – the people who have kept SDFWA running over the years. We need these volunteers to fill all the Board of Directors and Committee Chair positions, run the Design in Wood Exhibition, organize Shop Tours and General Meetings, produce the newsletter, keep track of all our members and dues, run our Toy Program, and do the many other jobs needed to keep SDFWA running. And of course, now there are also many new SDFWA members involved in running the Shop.
Palomar CFT Program
One of the community institutions which contributed to the growth of SDFWA was the extraordinary woodworking program at Palomar College. Once offering 60 different woodworking and related classes, it was an amazing resource which helped foster woodworking both as a hobby and vocation in San Diego. Many SDFWA members took classes and earned certificates from Palomar, and some of our more experienced woodworkers have taught there, too. Plus we drew heavily on the expertise of their equipment maintenance crew when setting up the SDFWA Member Shop.
SDFWA Member Shop
There was a fateful meeting discussing the future of SDFWA which was held in 2013. Many of the things discussed – expanding mentoring and education activities, facilitating community woodworking activities, taking on special projects – came down to “it would be really nice to have an SDFWA shop facility.” We were also inspired by a recent article in Fine Woodworking magazine about the Kansas City Guild Shop. If they can do it, why can’t we? This meeting turned out to be the trigger for a years-long process of brainstorming, planning, and fundraising which resulted in the SDFWA Member Shop opening in June 2017.
With the advent of the Member Shop, our membership dynamics have changed dramatically – and it’s too early to know what those long-term trends will be. But we are extraordinarily pleased with influx of new, more diverse woodworkers, the increase in the type of events we can host, and the greatly expanded possibilities for hosting woodworking educational activities.
Jeff Bratt
SDFWA Historian