Furniture With Soul

At the suggestion of one of our members, we will be having a MWA Boston Chapter Meetup later in June/early July to visit the NAGA Gallery's presentation of Furniture With Soul.

This Friday, June 1st, will be the opening featuring:


Book signing with the author and Furnituremaker David Savage (Cosponsored by Porter Square Books)  
Friday, June 1
5 pm 

Reception with the furnituremakers
Friday, June 1
6 - 8 pm

If you can make it for Friday, let us know in the comments or by email and we'll get an impromptu meetup going with those MWA'ers planning on attending. It should be a great opportunity to get inspiration, and chat with the makers about design, methods, etc.  

If two days is not sufficient notice, fear not, we'll be planning our visit for later in the show. (albeit, without the furnituremakers on hand (that we know of)

MWA Boston Area Meetup, June 9th

Furniture Institute 

of

 Massachusetts

MWA Boston Meetup at (and following) the event:

Thirteenth Annual

Furniture Exhibit 

&

Open House

  June 9, 2012

4-8 PM

Please join us at our Open House featuring student and faculty work. Meet the students, tour the facility and enjoy great food, tasty drink and good company! All are welcome.

For those who haven't seen Phil Lowe's shop, here's a great opportunity to meet the students, instructors, see some furniture, get inspired, talk shop, ask questions, sign up for some classes, meet some great people...

All are welcome (NOT just Boston chapter members, if you'll be in town, let me know!)

As usual, the meetup will occur during the event, and will likely continue at a local restaurant or watering hole.

If you think you'll attend, please leave a comment below, or send me an email

(Note: I may not be able to attend this one, but letting me know you're going will let me put everyone who is going in touch for the meetup)

MWA Podcast Episode 6 - Asa Christiana

Ideas for Asa?

If you have ideas for how Fine Woodworking can better integrate and contribute in the Online Woodworking community contact us at modernwoodworkersassociation@gmail.com or send them to Editor Asa Christiana directly: AChristiana@finewoodworking.com

Help us help Fine Woodworking join the online community and help spread the craft!
Remember: We're all in this together!

MWA Meeting 5 Seattle

On May 5 the Seattle Chapter got together.  We met up at The Northwest Woodworkers Gallery.  This gallery features local (Pacific Northwest) builders/designers.  There is quite a diversity of styles to see at the gallery. I recommend any local Seattle area woodworkers stop by and check it out. Currently showing was their “Rising Star Furniture Makers”. Next door to the gallery was Urban Hardwoods.  Urban Hardwoods creates beautiful slab style furniture, from local trees that would have been discarded.

Taking part in this meet-up were:  Ananda, Badger, Glenn, and myself (Mike Lingenfelter).  After browsing the two showrooms, we headed off to Ohana.  Badger recommended it, and it was a cool little Hawaiian place, with a great pulled pork sandwich!

Enjoy the pictures below, from the two showrooms.

Meet the MWA at WIA

Woodworking in America is billed as “The Ultimate Woodworking Weekend.” The fine folks at Popular Woodworking Magazine, who put it on every year, put it this way: Immerse yourself in a woodworking weekend packed with skill-building sessions, aisles of top toolmakers and social events where you can talk shop and relax with fellow woodworkers. The editors of Popular Woodworking Magazine have gathered the top craftspeople and tool vendors under one roof to give you an incredible three-day woodworking experience!

This year, some of those “top craftspeople” they’ve gathered are the Modern Woodworkers Association. They’ve been nice enough to enter a marketing agreement with us. In exchange for helping to promote WIA, the Modern Woodworkers Association will receive booth space at both the Pasadena and Cincinnati WIAs in 2012. They will also provide us with a small compensation for anyone who buys tickets to either WIA using our affiliate code: MODERNWW

Now, while we appreciate anyone who does use the code, let me explain a few things about it:

1. We’d like everyone to know that while we are grateful to Popular Woodworking Magazine for the booth and compensation, we at the Modern Woodworkers Association consider those points a bonus. We would not be promoting WIA unless we truly felt it was a worthwhile event that was worth everyone’s attending. If you have any doubt that we’re only promoting WIA12 because of the deal, then please check out my posts about WIA11. I didn’t receive any compensation for attending last year.

2. Tickets to WIA12 are currently in the “Early Bird” discounted phase. If you use our affiliate code, we’ll get compensation, but at the expense of your early bird discount. Use of the code changes tickets to the full, post-early bird price. As we’d rather see you there than be compensated, please buy your tickets now, without the code. If July 27th rolls around, and you still haven’t bought tickets, then please use our affiliate code, MODERNWW at checkout.

So please, buy tickets to WIA12 as soon as you can (the early bird discount expires on 7/27/12) and register on Aaron’s 2012 Woodworking Conference Buddy Tracker so that we know where to find you. We’ll be the guys in the MWA booth blathering on about woodworking.

If you do wait until after July 27th, then please don’t forget, the affiliate code is MODERNWW

We’ll see you in Pasadena and Cincinnati (and New Paltz too).


For more on WIA, check out these videos. In this first video, Popular Woodworking was kind enough to feature MWA Admins Tom Iovino and Steve Taylor.

In this video of mine, you catch the action at the hand tool Olympics and the epic hand saw kick back from Matt Gradwohl that almost impaled Aaron Marshal.

Have fun and we'll see you at WIA12.

MWA Visits Highland Woodworking

As I mentioned before last weekend Highland Woodworking had their One Day Sale.  As part of this event Scott Morton of http://scottmorton.com came down to do some demos and work on some new videos for Highland's educational series.  MWA came out in force and we had a great turnout.  We even had a few out of town member drive in to visit, Scott Meek of http://scottmeekwoodworks.com drove down from Asheville, NC and we also had Jeff Branch of http://woodfever.net came up from Pelham, Al.  We had a great time looking around the store and taking advantage of the sale. 

After leaving Highland, we visited a local watering hole to have dinner and talk woodworking.  It was great seeing everyone and I for one look forward to doing it again.

Making the most of ugly wood

I mentioned during the MWA podcast (#5) that I'd post about the laundry cabinet and other things I'm working on at the moment.

In short, I'm making the working my way through a few tons of Ash, trying to make the most of some ugly wood (or, perhaps better stated, wood with character).
Here's a preview:

Here is a link to the whole post, including the laundry cabinet I'm referring to.  

MWA Podcast Episode 5 - Woodworking Blogs

Highland Woodworking's One Day Sale with Morton

Going to be in Atlanta this weekend?  If so be sure to stop by Highland Woodworking for the One Day Sale this Saturday.  One of our very own MWA Boston members, Mike Morton, will be there doing demos and shooting video.  Morton is the instructor and host for Highland's educational videos and product demos.

The event will be a lot of fun and there will be some great deals.  We plan on being there at 4pm on Saturday to watch some of the demos and check out the sales.  If you can make it throw on your MWA t-shirt and come out.  For all that would like we are planning on grabbing dinner and a brew afterward around 6pm.

If you can't make it out when the group is scheduled to meet, then try and stop by anytime during the day.  If you do make sure you introduce yourself to Morton.

I hope to see you all there as this will be a great event and looks like we may have members from several different states coming to join in the fun.  

Be safe, learn something, and have fun!