Woodworking In America 2012 MidWest In Photos

Woodworking in America 2012 Midwest was a great event this year. Though the community seemed slightly split by having two (2) venues this year, we still managed to have a blast in Cincinnati. We took classes, hawked the MWA to anyone that would listen and, of course, hung out with our woodworking friends (both new and old).

Yep, Mike brought a log to a bar.

In the coming days and weeks, we'll be assembling a podcast of interviews we made with many of the lecturers from WIA2012 Midwest. In the mean time, check the links below to see the full Modern Woodworkers Association photo galleries of the weekend.

We used the photo sharing capabilities of Google+ Events to set up events for our Thursday night get together and the conference itself. Through the Events, anyone who was invited (everyone who follows the Modern Woodworkers Association on Google+) was able to upload all of the photos they took during the event to a communal album.

Thursday nights festivities

On Thursday night, Sean Wisniewski and Dyami Plotke contributed photos to the album you can find here.

We came, we saw, we sat on Megan's bench.

For the full event, Jeff Waggoner, Sean Wisniewski, Nik Brown and Dyami Plotke contributed photos. The full event album is here.

Thank You Woodpeckers

We need to thank Rich Hummel of Woodpeckers. Besides making great marking and routing tools, Rich was kind enough to help us out and fund the lanyards we gave away at Woodworking in America West and will give away at Woodworking in America Midwest.

If you're not familiar with Woodpeckers, they are the purveyors of some of the nicest milled aluminum marking and routing tools you can imagine. I know the make your own wooden marking tool movement has caught on as of late, but listen to Rich talk about machining aluminum and you'll see he's just as passionate about it as we are about working wood.

My first Woodpecker tool was their 1281 12" Precision Woodworking Square I bought from Christoper Schwarz a few years ago when he was selling his excess tools. While I have the utmost respect for Chris, and I enjoy learning from him whenever I can, I can't wrap my head around selling off a 1281. It instantly became my favorite marking tool, and I don't think I'll ever have the desire to make my own when I can use one of these.

Be sure to check out Woodpeckers at woodpeck.com or by clicking the Woodpecker logo on right. They'll become your favorite tools too.

On a related note, Popular Woodworking Magazine is currently auctioning off a set of signed Chris Schwarz Books & DVDS. Having read the three (3) books ("The Workbench Design Book", "Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use" & "Handplane Essentials") I'll tell you they're well worth it, even if the auction wasn't for the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

WIA 2012 -West, Thanks for your Help!

We've made it back from a great weekend in Pasadena, where the Modern Woodworkers Association hosted the Hand Tool Olympics. If you missed the live stream and really want to see the activity, you can find a series of live streams on the MWA Channel on YouTube. We'll eventually find some time to edit the 6 or more hours of it to just the action, so be forewarned, there is a fair amount of downtime captured.

We'll be aggregating a ton of photos from WIA from our members over the next few weeks, and posting them as soon as we can. Before we do anything else, we'd like to acknowledge everyone who helped make the Hand Tool Olympics possible at WIA West.

First, a sincere thank you to our members who sacrificed hours of their time to help out teaching, timing, setting-up, tearing down, prepping wood, tuning tools, and so much more. In no particular order, thanks to:

• Kyle Barton
• Nik Brown
• Aaron Marshall
• Matt Gradwohl
• Jeremiah Rodriguez
• Chris Wong
• Mike Lingenfelter
• Matt Watkins

We also received tons of support from friends of the MWA in donating prizes and gifts, lending us tools, benches and materials, and other support for pulling it off. We thank them for their help, and encourage you, the members of the MWA, to support the organizations who share our mission and help make it possible:

• Hock Tools
• Lie-Nielsen
• Elkhead Tools
• Knew Concepts
• Blue Spruce Toolworks
• The Wood Whisperer
• The Hand Tool School
• Woodpeckers
• Port Townsend School of Woodworking
• Lee Valley - Veritas
• Cerritos College
• and of course Popular Woodworking

Last, but not least, Thanks to Adam Cherubini, Glen Huey, and Chuck Bender for stopping by to help educate, and sharing their skill and knowledge. We learned a lot!

Special Thanks to Wilbur Pan for capturing this photo of me getting my butt-kicking from Chuck Bender in the dovetail challenge...(I, uh...let him win...)

Woodworking in America Exhibitor's Announced

As they draw ever so closer, the staff over at Popular Woodworking are flushing out their information about the Woodworking in America 2012 events. While the schedules and tickets have been available for a while, they've just added the exhibitor lists.

I'm excited to say that the Modern Woodworkers Association will be at both the Pasadena and Cincinnati events in an official capacity, with a full fledged booth on the show floor. We'd love for you to stop by and say hello while you're in the market place. We're not sure exactly what we'll be doing there yet, but we promise it'll be fun and will involve wood.

To see who else will be exhibiting, be sure to check out the WIA West Coast Exhibitor Page and the WIA Midwest Exhibitor Page.

Have a safe summer and we'll see you in Pasadadena, Cincinatti (and New Paltz).

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 Podcast Episode 5 - Woodworking Blogs

Where Will You Be For WIA 2012?

So registration for Woodworking in 2012 has opened up. As you all probably know by now, the event has been split and will be held in Pasadena, CA on October 12-14 and in Covington, KY on November 2-4.

No matter which WIA you attend, you'd be remiss if you didn't dance on the table.

We previously asked our readers and members to answer poll questions regarding which event they were attending. The short answer to those polls is that slightly more folk said Pasadena.

Now, I'm asking you not to vote on a poll about where you plan to go, but to declare which event you did register for in the comments below and let everyone know.

Besides the comments (which we would like you to post in) please also check out Aaron's great Woodworking Conference Buddy Tracker here. Apparently he was thinking of greater things in that lecture.

Not that WIA is all fun and games. You will learn something.

I'll begin by saying that I'm going to return to Covington. The reason is simple: time & money. Covington is a cheaper location for me to travel to. No matter which venue I attend, I have to arrive on Thursday and leave on Sunday, so the added appeal of the local sites in Pasadena is unfortunately lost on me. I'll be at WIA the whole time.

To those of you attending Covington, I can't wait to see you. We'll have a blast.

To those of you attending Pasadena, have fun. I hope it's a great trip.

Now please, let us know, which WIA will we find you at?

-Dyami

Edit: You can also let people know which venue you'll be attending by using Aaron Marshall's 2012 Woodworking Conference Buddy Tacker. You can learn more about Aaron, an Atlanta MWA Chapter member at his great blog, Garage Shop.

Which WIA12 Will You Attend?

Popular Woodworking has announced that they will host two (2) Woodworking in America events in 2012. One in Pasadena, CA on October 12-14 and the other in Covington, KY on November 2-4. As hanging out with woodworking friends is the absolute best part of any Woodworking in America conference, we'd like to know which venue do you prefer?

When they first stated there would be two (2) venues in their weekly newletter, there was a twitter discussion that we should poll each other and see which venue was better for everyone.

While we'd encourage everyone to attend the event that works better for them, the more of us that can get together, the better either event will be. Some people, like myself, may even include which is the favored venue in deciding which one to go to ourselves.