Max | The Lighthearted Woodworker

The Austerlitz Woodworker’s Show came as all things do, very quickly. My shop was quite full and quite active. You remember I had an offer by an 8 and an 11 year old to ‘help’? Well who could turn down help like that? Their enthusiasm alone filled the shop. I put my work aside and with the help of their mother, worked on turning pens and ice cream scoops! What could be better? I was able to put the finishing touches on the console table and build an ipad stand to display my work, I tried to squeeze in time to finish the shaker table but that just wasn’t going to happen. I took a deep breath and said to myself “it’s all good, do what you can. This is my hobby and I have to enjoy it. No pressure!” The rest of the day was fantastic, as my son and daughter taught us a thing or two about turning!

Austerlitz is very fortunate to have a thriving Historical Society which owns a 20 acre parcel of land that is the home of the Old Austerlitz Village. The village is a “living history museum of post-and-beam houses, a granary, a blacksmith shop, a one-room schoolhouse, a Christian Church and other historic buildings.” The latest is a newly restored barn, which was raised just in time to host the show.

The ‘new’ barn.

Clark Olsen’s amazing screen and chair

I loaded in the morning of the show and but wasn’t able to fit into the barn. So instead I shared the granary next to the barn with master craftsman Clark Olsen.

This town certainly houses some impressive talent! The show consisted of 11 professional woodworkers and four hobbyists, all extraordinary in their own way. The variety alone was was impressive, running the gamut from cabinetry, marquetry, classic shaker, windsor chairs, toys, furniture, even whirligigs. Something for everyone!

Falling Water work by John Dunne

John Porritt taught me a thing or two about Windsor Chairs

: I got an introductory lesson in marquetry from Herb Cook.

Clark Olsen’s Music Stand

The best part of any woodworking show is the camaraderie. Woodworkers are the kindest, most giving folk you will ever find. That has never more true than in Austerlitz.

What’s a show without whirligigs!!!

The Lighthearted Woodworker….

It was an terrific day. Very inspiring. I met so many great and talented people, not only fellow woodworkers, but people from this amazing community. I wish I had taken more photos and had time to chat with more people, but you can only squeeze so much into one day.

I wanted to mention all that attended and really extend my thanks for welcoming me and for your generosity.

The Woodworkers of Austerlitz: Jeffrey All, Reggie Brantner, Herb Cook, John Dunne, Randy Ezinga, Tim Hawley, Dick Light, Scott Mesick, Chris Landy, Clark Olsen, Brian Polhemus, John Porritt, Howard Reznikoff, Steve Somlo and Michael Walters.

Max and Samantha manning the booth.

I would be remiss if i did not point out that not only did Max and Samantha hold down the fort while Daddy was off being social. They also sold all of their turned bottle stops!!

Quite a weekend in the Northeast!

We got a little dusting this weekend!

I started the weekend with a private dovetailing lesson (more on that in the next post), when the snow started coming down, and boy did it come down! By the time we were done we had 20″!! We live on a mountain that seems to have it’s own climate. It could be dry in town, and we could be have a blizzard at our house. But in this case, as you know, the Northeast got hit pretty hard witha pre-Halloween storm. Our accumulation is just more than yours!

So my kids played in the snow, my wife sat, curled up reading her ipad and I headed to the shop to get going on the twin cradle. Life is good!

I must admit, this is the most unsupervised milling I’ve done to date. I’ve got a powermatic 8′ Helvetica jointer and a dewalt 735 planer, which I’ve used for small projects, but this was what I bought the powermatic, a serious project with beautiful stock. Enough messing around, it was time to put this machine to the test. I was not disappointed. I was treated to smooth, easy cuts that revealed the beautiful grain and color of the cherry. Awesome.

Rough Cherry from Berkshire Products

A little back story on the jointer and planer. As I starting getting serious about woodworking several years back, I realized, as many do, that this was going to require a little more precision, both from the wood and the tools (and of course me!). You see, wood needs to be dry and square and….well, lets assume you know that if your reading this blog! But seriously, it wasn’t that long ago when things like that were like a light bulb going on in my head. At this point hand tools were still more intimidating than power tools, so I went the power tool route. After doing some research and looking at what I could afford, I decided on a Jet JJP-10BT Planer/Jointer combo. Talk about a deal! I could get BOTH machines in one for around 400 bucks!! Awesome!! It’s a two-fer! Well you know how this story ends. In fairness, the jointer portion worked ok, but the planer really never worked right and switching the machine between the two operations wasn’t a nightmare, but it was just stupid. So I have a $400 collecting sawdust in the basement. Low ball offers are being accepted.

So like all bad relationships I moved on. I saved up and bought the Dewalt 735 on sale at Lowes and when Amazon had a sale on powermatic tools I jumped on it. Of course I had to get their awful credit card, but it was 0% financing for 18 months and 20% off. Such a deal! I can justify anything. As the old adage goes “you get what you pay for”. I saved, I paid for quality and I’m really happy. Both machines did not let me down. It almost seemed like I knew what I was doing!