Returning home with fresh ideas

Vic and I exchanged places every hour to present hand tool methods; me with plane Jane planes like Stanleys and he with veritas
Well, my friends, you have given me a lot to think about since both shows. I am sure, judging by your emails, that you have anticipations as High as mine. Montreal suddenly came on the map this past week in New Jersey and so too Virginia is looking forward to a return for masterclasses and more teaching from New Legacy.

 

 

 

Many lumber suppliers attend shows with real wood, often milled by them and then dried.

Partnering with woodworking guilds and clubs seems a truly practical way of spreading the word on the Real Woodworking Campaign throughout the USA so who knows where that will lead to in terms of reaching the New-genre woodworker. I feel excited about that and hope we can create something similar in the UK as we launch our first UK RWC club at the Penrhyn Castle workshop.

 

Jim Heavey presents a variety of workshops the the Woodworking Shows

Imagine an RWC in Montreal, and Quebec, Washington DC and Nigeria. I don’t really know what’s supposed to happen internationally, but as the RWC continues to gain credence we can reverse some of the trends that have invaded woodworking so pervasively as to make hand tools seem so negative.

 

 

Interested in harvesting and slabbing?

At the Woodworking Shows show I always ask the audiences one question. “How many of you here are professional woodworkers making your living from working wood?” Out of the hundreds attending my seminars and masterclasses since the beginning of January only six people raised their hand and it has been that way for decades. Now that’s from literally thousands of woodworkers over just a half a dozen shows this year. Some audiences are around 150-200 strong and of these it was mostly the case that none raised their hands. Now that tells me a lot. It tells me that the show is available for anyone who loves woodworking and that primarily serious and committed amateurs looking for solutions in the way of equipment, tools, wood, information and education support the shows.

Solid, well thought through tools for hand workers

The catalyst is of course wood and not MDF and pressed fibreboard. That’s a primary ingredient to the RW Campaign. Veritas has really supported this campaign by simply being there as the only support provider of a the widest range of serious high quality hand tools, but there are others too. I hope that we will see the trend of the past 50 years shift to present a real balance to woodworking. That’s the only way we will restore woodworking for young people. At the present, the shortfall at the shows was that there were hardly any children or young people there. That must change. We need new hand tools for young people, women woodworkers. We need projects designed for them to make and much more.