Hey woodworkers:
Hope to see you this week-end at the woodworking show. Please stop by the booth and say hello. We have a great show lined up and hope you will be able to attend. Thanks, Mike from American Sycamore for more information about the show and the one that might be coming your way take a look at
On 8 Oct 2003 19:53:45 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@ccrtc.com (Mike at American Sycamore) Crawled out of the shop and said. . .:
Mike, you going to be in minnesota for the show the following weekend i think it is?
Traves
Yes, he will be there, complete with booth. Mike and I are driving up Thursday night.
-Dan V.
On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 16:09:50 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@NOSPAMcomcast.net (Dan Valleskey) Crawled out of the shop and said. . .:
Awesome, look forward to meeting you both!
Traves, who wonders how many other closet wReckers are going to be there?
You mean at Indy, or the other one? I'll be at Indy, either Saturday with my son or Sunday with SWMBO (who also is a ww-er, posts here occasionally as IndyRose). Maybe with both of them on Friday eve...
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 02:15:04 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@milmac.com (Doug Miller) Crawled out of the shop and said. . .:
lol figures yur down there. . .im here in the minneapolis area
Completely new direction... just responding to the subject.
Did anyone else think this show was worthwhile? It was a fairly small show with what appeared to be light attendance. However, every one of the vendors and demonstrators were extremely informative and took the time to offer advice. I brought my daughter with me to see if she would be interested in working with a scroll saw. Every vendor we talked to offered good and honest advice and spent time talking to both of us. The PS Wood (aka Timberwolf bandsaw blades) vendor talked me through some bandsaw problems I was having. The guy selling the magnetic featherboards gave us a mini-lecture on laminated wood bending.
Maybe I'm just now getting enough experience to ask the right questions, but it was probably the best $8 and 5 hours I've ever spent on woodworking.
[snip]
*Very* worthwhile. SWMBO and I took #2 son Allen (age 12) along. He griped and moaned about it beforehand, but within fifteen minutes of getting there, he had spotted Don Weber's booth, and was fascinated watching Don turn firewood into chair spindles (frankly, so were we). Don sat him down on the shaving horse, handed him a drawknife (I'm sure it helped that Allen was wearing a shirt with the Boy Scouts logo), and showed him how to smooth and square a walnut billet in preparation for turning. Allen spent the next _four_hours_ playing apprentice and assistant to Don, learning about working with green wood and how to use a treadle lathe, and just generally seeing first-hand, in a way that I could never have explained to him, that fine results can be achieved with primitive tools.
That was worth the price of admission right there.
SWMBO got some hands-on instruction in lathe techniques from Don, too, things that I had tried unsuccessfully to show her previously. Don's an excellent teacher, much better than I am. And we both learned a lot about working green wood.
I got to see and touch Woodline's router bits, finally settling for myself a question that I had raised here a few months ago about their quality. The few responses that I received, and the comments I found with a Google search, fell into two distinct groups: (1) they're good middle-of-the road bits, and (2) they're absolute stinking garbage not worth the powder to blow them to hell.
My conclusion, based on visual and tactile examination (but, I admit, no actual use): they aren't absolute stinking garbage, but they aren't good middle-of-the-road bits either.
I didn't buy any.
I did buy a dado set at the Ridge Carbide booth, after seeing that it makes cuts just as smooth as a Forrest Dado King -- and with a flatter bottom -- for almost a hundred dollars less. The Forrest dado set leaves tiny but still noticeable "wings" at the bottom corners, but the "wings" left by the Ridge Carbide set are nearly invisible. I also bought Ridge's special-purpose blade for cutting dados for undersized 1/4" plywood (actually 5.7 mm); I have a lot of drawers to make soon, and this will sure beat the daylights out of making multiple passes with a 1/8" router bit. Got that *and* the dado set for almost fifty bucks less than it would have cost for the Forrest dado set alone.
Once I actually use these guys, I'll post reviews.
I was very impressed with the cut quality of Ridge's table saw blade, too. It looks every bit the equal of the Forrest WWII, at a significantly lower price. Probably would have bought one, if I didn't already have a WWII. I bought the WWII at the Indy woodworking show in January two years ago, but if Ridge had been exhibiting there, and I'd been able to compare the blades and the prices then, I think I would have bought the Ridge instead.
I was disappointed by the near-total absence of "big iron", Wood-Mizer being an obvious front-and-center exception.
It was nice to see a *lot* more hand tools, and more woodturning equipment, supplies, and demos than the January show (the one sponsored by Wood Magazine) typically has. Didn't buy anything in that area, but came away with ideas...
All in all, I think it's a good adjunct to the larger January show. I'm glad to have both of them here. I hope this one comes back next year.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
spam snipped-for-privacy@milmac.com (Doug Miller) wrote in news:gYSib.1784$ snipped-for-privacy@newssrv26.news.prodigy.com:
[snip] It must have been your son I saw with the big grin on his face using the draw knife....The wood mag show should take notice and have a few more hands on things for the kids. The vendors at that show would do well to involve them too. As a result of the people giving the demonstrations talking with, giving advice, and generally teaching my youngest daughter, I'll be buying a scroll saw in the very near future. Something I wouldn't have done if they hadn't got her interested it it.
jim
Probably so. Blond, 5'4", glasses, yellow tee-shirt, denim shorts?
Amen to that. The "Make-a-Memory" workshop was a step in the right direction, I think, but we didn't do that. We had seen the references to it in the ads, but when we got there and saw the signs hanging from the ceiling showing what the kids would be making on the scroll saw (a duck, a dinosaur, I forget the third one, all just block figures), the three of us looked at each other and said "Naaah". Allen's *waaaaay* beyond that on the scroll saw: he just recently completed a silhouette of the Eiffel Tower.
Scroll saws are great tools for kids. They can exercise all kinds of creativity, and the chances of getting hurt are pretty slim. Glad to hear your daughter has caught the bug too. I love spending time in the shop with my kids. You'll get to enjoy that too now.
The Dremel scroll saw they sell at Lowe's is a pretty good starter saw. Not very expensive, and quite workable. To control vibration, get a rubber pad (we bought one at WoodsWork on E. Washington St) and bolt the saw down to a bench or table with the pad in between. Make the bolts snug, but *not* tight.
Good places to buy blades are the woodworking shows, WoodsWork, and Winner Woodworking on the SE side. Superior Distributing, downtown, probably has them too, but I haven't checked. The library, and most of the woodworking stores, have a good supply of books on scroll saw techniques, and WoodsWork has _by_far_ the best selection of books of patterns, at all skill levels.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
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