john lucas
AAW Forum Expert
with all this negative talk I thought I would discuss how much fun I had at the symposium. First and foremost I met people from several different forums and had a good time talking to them. It was especially nice when I saw the pieces in the instant gallery and recognized my friends from the forums.
I saw some fascinating pieces in the instant gallery. There were some incredibly clean beautiful bowls and hollow forms with spectacular wood. I know we all appreciate that. I also some really experimental forms some of which didn't look turned at all but I met the artist on 2 of them and found out that they had a lot more turning than I thought. If you saw Jerry Bennett's bass fiddle you know one of the pieces. If you didn't see it imagine how Walt Disney would design a base fiddle for Fantasia and you'll be close. There were 7000 pieces in the strings of that fiddle, all turned cut a reassembled.
There simply isn't enough time to spend in the vendor area. Oops maybe spend wasn't a good word to use because I haven't gotten my credit card bill. I got to see some of the ornamental machines. One was an add on for the Jet mini that was pretty cool. New lathes, wow there were several monsters there including a host of the current state of the art machines, Robust, Serious Lathe, Oneway, Stubby, Vicmarc, Powermatic, etc.
If you like tools you had a wide range including several of the newer tools on the market plus demonstrations by people such as Jimmy Clewes, Stewart Batty,Johannes Michelson, Lyle Jamieson and others. Those were all on the vendor floor.
You could have spent your kids inheritance on the wood vendors. As always there are spectacular burls available as well as just about every color of wood imagineable.
The demo's I attended were good with an excellent job done by the video people. It could always be done better but remember how it was in the past and we've come a long way, especially when you consider they are all volunteers. The sound and lights were sometimes a problem but those were furnished by the convention center and it was hard to work around. Still the demonstrators did a wonderful job and learned something at them all.
I saw some fascinating pieces in the instant gallery. There were some incredibly clean beautiful bowls and hollow forms with spectacular wood. I know we all appreciate that. I also some really experimental forms some of which didn't look turned at all but I met the artist on 2 of them and found out that they had a lot more turning than I thought. If you saw Jerry Bennett's bass fiddle you know one of the pieces. If you didn't see it imagine how Walt Disney would design a base fiddle for Fantasia and you'll be close. There were 7000 pieces in the strings of that fiddle, all turned cut a reassembled.
There simply isn't enough time to spend in the vendor area. Oops maybe spend wasn't a good word to use because I haven't gotten my credit card bill. I got to see some of the ornamental machines. One was an add on for the Jet mini that was pretty cool. New lathes, wow there were several monsters there including a host of the current state of the art machines, Robust, Serious Lathe, Oneway, Stubby, Vicmarc, Powermatic, etc.
If you like tools you had a wide range including several of the newer tools on the market plus demonstrations by people such as Jimmy Clewes, Stewart Batty,Johannes Michelson, Lyle Jamieson and others. Those were all on the vendor floor.
You could have spent your kids inheritance on the wood vendors. As always there are spectacular burls available as well as just about every color of wood imagineable.
The demo's I attended were good with an excellent job done by the video people. It could always be done better but remember how it was in the past and we've come a long way, especially when you consider they are all volunteers. The sound and lights were sometimes a problem but those were furnished by the convention center and it was hard to work around. Still the demonstrators did a wonderful job and learned something at them all.
