Here’s a recap of my first day at Woodworking In America 2016 — held at the Northern Kentucky Convention in Covington Kentucky which is part of the greater Cincinnati Ohio area.

This was my first time attending this conference and other than a nightmare of a time getting there by plane from NH (Thursday night flight cancelled, the second set of flights Friday at the crack of dawn, missing the connection due to ground staff incompetence and fighting to get on another flight later in the day) and missing the 2/3 of the day’s lectures I still had a very nice first day watching Freddy Roman’s presentation, exploring the brew and browse event, meeting a ton of friends old and new and meeting several online friends in person. I also had a great dinner with a great bunch of folks — Zach Dillinger, Mary May, George Walker and many others.

Click on any of the images below to click through the images as a slideshow. (if you are viewing this post in an email browser, please click on the post title above to view the post on the website itself)

Greetings from Popular Woodworking in America 2016

John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge

Street leading to the Northern Kentucky Convention Center, home to WIA 2016

Freddy Roman giving a talk on sand shading and inlay.

Some of Freddy’s banding stock samples.

Freddy Roman demonstrating some fine detail work.

Sand shaded blanks

Very neat sample board of some incredibly tiny and intricate banding Freddy acquired and has worked from.

Carving close up on big screen

David Thiel of popular woodworking tweaking his camera. I always think photographs of other photographers are fun.

My friend Zach Dillinger at the Mortise and Tenon booth

The new Crucible Tools — hold fast and dividers. Very nice looking.

Paper sector by George Walker and Jim Tolpin

Brendan Bernhardt Gaffney and George walker looking at Brendan’s new sector prototype.

Prototype Sector by Brendan. Definitely going to get one soon.

Joshua Klein and his most excellent Mortise and Tenon Magazine booth

Tico Vogt Toolworks

The large Lee Valley/Veritas booth. Always fun to try out their latest and greatest tools

SAPFM booth with the hand tool olympics. I’m proud to say I did will with my cutting events.

Lie Nielsen Toolworks with Mr. Lie Nielsen himself.

Deneb Puchalski of Lie Nielsen Toolworks giving a demo. Deneb is a great guy and I’ve been buying tools from LN for many years and he’s been my main point of contact for most of it.

Knew concepts marquetry saw

Some of the very nice work by Texas Heritage Woodworks

Jason Thigpen of Texas Heritage Woodworks making a great face.

Some of the very nice work by Texas Heritage Woodworks

Plate 11 Workbench Company

Plate 11 Workbench Company with leg vise and real nice planing stop

Plate 11 Workbench Company planing stop

A nice rocking chair by ne of the exhibitors. Wish I could recall his name, but he was offering online courses, one of which was on making this chair.

The Superior Works 🙂

Up next is a post about the second two days of the conference. I had a great time and hope I can attend it again in 2017.

Take care,
-Bill
@TheRainford