Synopsis of WoodWorks in Springfield, MA
Mike in Mystic
>Hi everyone,
I was lucky enough to be able to spend the day up at the WoodWorks show in Springfield, MA. I thought I'd give a little overview of the day I had, as it was a lot of fun.
I started off at 10AM-12PM with a seminar by Frank Klausz titled "Woodworking Essentials". I realized it was for very beginning woodworkers and didn't expect to get a lot of complicated instructions and my expectations were met. I mainly was interested in getting to hear from a master furniture maker in person (this is my first show of any sort) and get a little insight in how they approach woodworking. The class was fairly small - maybe 12 people - and Frank was just as animated and interesting as his videos, which I have a few of. He did take some digs at Norm, but he did so in a gracious way and it had us all laughing.
After that I walked around the show floor, and checked everything out. Although it wasn't a very big show (even to my uninitiated eyes), it had great booths included the FineToolJournal (I actually bit on their 15% LN 140 block plane - been looking at it for some time and couldn't help myself), LeeValley, several wood distributors, etc.
I stopped into the Popular Woodworking booth and talked with Christopher Schwarz and Robert Lang for a good while. They were both extremely gracious and asked me a lot of questions and gave me a lot of advice. They even let me look at the pre-print of the next PopWood issue - it looked really good (there was a great review written by Chris on marking knives).
I also was able to chat with Mike Jurnigan in his Windsor chair demo area. Was a great guy! I haven't ever made a Windsor, but explained how I was planning on it and getting some tools together. He gave me great advice on materials and tools, and recommended some instruction avenues. Although he wasn't wearing his WC hat it was easy to tell he was from this community due to his willingness and eagerness to share what he knows. His chairs looked wonderful, as well.
The final big bonus of the show were the free seminars. I didn't get to see any of them in total (due to my own time schedule), but I did catch parts of one by Robert Lang on keyed mortise and tenons and most of the one by Christopher Schwarz on hand saws.
All in all, I would say the day was well spent. I had a lot of fun and only wish I was able to go on Saturday when it looks like a nice crowd of WC'ers will be in attendance.
I submitted a great "sighting" picture so I'll hold onto that until it get's posted, but I was on a mission to get a good one and I think I succeeded, even though I had to be a little "sneaky" to do it.
Mike
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