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Hopefully someone who attended will take some time and let us know what they saw at WIA while the memories are still fresh.  Was either the Lie-Nielsen or Lee Valley large plow plane in evidence?  Any other tools to look out for?  How about the speakers....Who stood out?

Yes, please. Those of us who had to stay home would really like to indulge in a little vicarious WIA.

Did not see either of the large plow planes. Talked to Deneb about the LN plow and I am cautiously optimistic.

It's quite possible today was a travel day for most who attended. I'm certain we'll see more in the next few days.

Here’s my WIA report, with the caveat that I’m a bit biased because I gave talks on Japanese tools/woodworking, and Chinese furniture this year.

I think this year’s WIA certainly holds its own against the others, and may be one of the best ones I’ve been to. The classes were quite well attended. If anyone thinks that WIA is a place for hand tool dilettantes, two of the most crowded sessions were talks by James Hamilton on table saw jigs and router jigs.

The quality of the classes continues to be exceedingly high. One of the disadvantages of being a speaker is that that’s three sessions where I can’t see other classes because I have to give my own. I semi-seriously considered shortening one of my talks to a single slide that said, “Japanese tools are awesome”, and then leaving to see Freddy Roman.

The marketplace was as busy as always, and is also a great place to learn about woodworking. I remember reading a pre-WIA thread here where the idea that the marketplace more or less made the paid classes not worthwhile, but I don’t see that as being the case. It seemed that there were fewer vendors this year, but the buzz was just as high, and the change in the number of vendors seemed to be in the realm of year-to-year variance. 

It was great to see folks in person as well: Zach Dillinger and Rob Young are the Woodnetters that pop to mind. There are a ton of others as well.

All in all, a great time, as always. I’m already looking forward to next year’s WIA.

Drove in on Thursday, got in too late to do much except crash.  But the cool thing was about 14 of us chipped in and took over a 6000 square foot Air BnB for the weekend.  Very nice and really, really knocked down the attendance cost!

Saw lots of familiar faces and was able to put faces to names.  Glad to have finally been able to shake Zack's hand and excited to see the book moving through the system!  Wilber had a couple of great presentations, particularly the one about Chinese furniture/joinery.  That's some crazy stuff.

Oh, and if Roy Underhill offers to make you tea, politely decline.


The market place was good but seems to be sticking with the trend of late to become smaller.  But the vendors/makers/dealers that were present were of high quality and good spirits.  They also had lots of short teaching sessions at the marketplace but I didn't catch any.  

I think my favorite "class" was one done by Alf Sharp where he demonstrated and discussed some of his methods for French (shellac) polishing.  I've been working on that skill and have had success, but not consistent success.  His demonstration confirmed for me that a few of the problems I'm having are easily remedied and more simply than I'd considered.  And that one idea I've been toying with (using a spray rig to body up the shellac after the first coat that does the pore filling but before the final two polish coats) is a viable method.

Plenty of vintage goodies to paw through from Patrick Leach, Jim Bode and Old Tool Journal.  Found a few things that had been hanging around on my search list.  A nice, very thin walled, wide paring chisel.  Good steel with boxwood handle (and apparently a rather paranoid previous owner because it has about 7 copies of their name stamp).  Needs a bit more work to straighten the edge but a very quick hit on the stones and it was cutting like a dream.  Maker's mark is a bit obscured but I can make out "Liverpool" but the name isn't well marked and I'll have to make a rubbing to read it.


Also picked up another Marples rosewood mortise gauge with the "twist-tail" adjuster.  And found a nice, clean Stanly 165 marking gauge.  That's the one with the reversible fence, one side for flat, the other side for concave referencing.  You can never have too many marking gauges.



Have a few more goodies to clean up and tune up too.

  Maybe Roy should demonstrate that board-bending with Sassafras...