Torbin Helshoi cuts a circular blank using a new band saw accessory that he developed.
Christina Baxter kicked off the Freud press event. Freud is a leader in the cutting tool industry, both industrial and the enthusiast woodworker.
International Woodworking Fair, Atlanta, Georgia, August 23rd – 26th, 2006
— It is so appropriate that this bi-annual woodworking show goes by the name IWF or the International Woodworking Fair. I say so because this event, at its heart, evokes the spirit of a fair in its true sense. I am put in mind of medieval markets, where folks gathered on “market day” not only to buy and sell and show off their latest and greatest products, but to see old friends and to make new ones.
This year’s IWF was a perfect example: I found everything from old standard tools, produced by folks I have known for years … to brand-new inventions being presented by the inventors, who had probably maxed out all their credit cards just to get themselves and their product to this show.
New products — from bread-and-butter offerings like table saws, to whiz-bang overly-gizmonic laser-festooned, electronically enhanced, fanciful widgets — are what those of us attending the show pony-up to see. And there was much, in fact too much, to be seen in the mere four days I walked the floor and soaked up the experience. All of your senses are constantly being stimulated from the time you enter the hall at 8AM until you drag your tired and sorry behind out of the door at 6PM. But just as it was with the medieval market day, business neither stops, nor is your day over when the merchants close their doors.
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General International unveiled a slick (literally) new product. This new offering allows you to “float” your stationary power tools across a hard cement floor on a cushion of air.
So late into the lovely warm hours of an Atlanta, Georgia evening, the fair goers, disparate folk from all over the world … talk, eat and drink — likely to excess in some cases — bound together by a common passion for woodworking and the common event they all flock to.
While the reflections above are the only way that we can extend the experience of being at the show, in the offerings on the new product page, you'll find a sampling of the wares on display at the International Woodworking Fair. A link to the product's web site is included in the write-up in case you'd like to know more about the product and its company (although some items are so new there will not be information available for a while). We hope you find this eZine Expo interesting and useful. Please allow me to extend an invitation to come back often (bookmark this page) when you are considering your next woodworking-related purchase. (Or even if you just want to dream a bit about your next woodworking purchase or project!)
Have fun at the woodworking fair!
Rob Johnstone, editor, Woodworker’s Journal