Two days at the Baltimore Woodworking Show

I have sadly neglected everyone over the past few days and I apologize. The show has been going really well and I thank everyone here for the cookies and cards and the bottles of water and the rags I forgot to bring with me.

Needless to say I got the workbench build completed in time for the long drive down from New York to Baltimore and the whole bench and tools fit nicely into the Chevy Cruze I used to travel in. The bench was rock solid throughout the show and took me only 10 minutes to assemble so I was glad to have made the knock down version for my travels. This bench is a five footer and anyone building this size should be happy with the size as It is good and stable. It’s two feet deep and I made it 1” lower than the usual 38” high I like. You may recall that the bench is made from 20 2x4s I bought at 5pm on New Year’s eve. It actually took 17 2x4s at a cost $41.

I demonstrated for an hour and a half each demonstration starting every two hours at 10am. There was only a few minutes between demonstrations after answering questions but we had a lot of good fun. I try to anticipate the questions but they are so diverse it’s impossible so we take them and answer them. One thing I did was show that bevel-up planes will not out-perform bevel-down planes and actually will not come close to giving the performance of bevel-down planes for most work. I also countered advice people receive that the jack plane is a first-level starter plane - not good advice really, but if you find one at a good price you should buy either a #5 or a #5 1/2. I did get started on the tool chest build, but hope I can get the all of the corners dovetailed today. I also started on the mortise and tenoned frames with the raised panels for the back panel and the fall-front door. If I don’t see you in Baltimore today, perhaps you will be at the next show in New England later this week.