Warm Up for the Hand Tool Olympics at The Hand Tool School Booth at Woodworking in America
Woodworking in America is less than a week away and I don’t remember being this excited about an event in a long time. The last few weeks have been crazy as I get ready to cover the show for Popular Woodworking as their Social Media reporter as well as present the Hand Tool School to the world in my booth in the marketplace. I have a prime spot right near the entrance and across from the Lee Valley monster booth. My neighbors are Vesper Toolworks and Old Street Tools to each side and my good friend Mark Harrell of Bad Axe Toolworks right across the aisle. It is shaping up to be a really good time!
Garth Schafer and Chris Wong of the newly formed Time Warp Toolworks will be joining me in the booth to show off their new moulding planes. My Hand Tool School students know all about these already and are placing orders like the tool fanatics they are. The rest of the world will get their first peek at the planes and a chance to try them out. We will have our Windsor style sticking board set up (the one we will build on site Thursday) and everyone can stop by and make a moulding.
I will have several of the shop projects from Semester 1 of The Hand Tool School on display like my saw bench, saw til, layout square, and a few others. I will also have videos from the same semester playing in the back of the booth for those of you who want a chance to see the type of video I produce in the school. The web cam will be running too so smile and wave to the world when you stop by.
Under construction here, no vise or trestle piece yet, hey I still have 3 days!
Finally, I will also have my new Joinery Bench all tricked out with the Benchcrafted Moxon vise at center stage. This will be a project to be built in Semester 3 starting in January. The version in the booth is a quasi-prototype that I hope will get a lot of action all weekend to see how it stands up to the abuse. Based on the feedback from the weekend I may make some chances to the design but I feel pretty good about it right now.
Basically we will have all the tools and work holding needed to perform any of the events in the Hand Tool Olympics so stop by the booth and warm up or get some tips before venturing on to the competition field near the back of the marketplace. We will have a bench and saws for ripping and crosscutting, Bad Axe saws for dovetails and tenons, and planes and brace for jointing and boring. In years past too many people have watched the Hand Tool Olympics instead of participating and I hope that a chance to practice away from the events will get more people stepping up and competing.
On the whole it should be a pretty exciting set up with a lot to see and do. There are a lot of people I can’t wait to meet this weekend and please stop by and say hello, ask questions, get some instruction, play with tools, and have some fun. I won’t be in the booth every minute as I will be doing my best to cover the show for those that cannot be there, but you should be able to find me there on a regular basis.
