Musings

Groopstock Report – Day 1

As the glorious sunrise was fading into broad daylight, the crowd started arriving..  By 9AM we were up in the barn, on the new fourth floor and its wide open meeting space.  And holy cow, what a crowd it was.  At points in the day, counting spouses and others, we had well over fifty folks on hand.

Fred McLean was our Master of Ceremonies for the week, and Groopstock Coordinator and former Refinisher’s Group forum moderator Ben Myre assembled not only an excellent team to work with him on the planning and execution, but put together a pretty boffo schedule of wide-ranging presentations, demonstrations, and fellowship. cIMG_5907

We began with a brief round of introductions around the room, then quickly moved on to the presentation A Meaningful Life: Thoughts on Life, Craft and Brown & Shiny by Dave Reeves (who also served as Food Coordinator for the week, no small task with this herd of carnivores.)  Dave’s talk was universally lauded as a fantastic rumination on the nature of our craft and of life itself.  We were all ready to charge out the door to battle in the aftermath.

photo courtesy of Joshua Klein

photo courtesy of Joshua Klein

Immediately after that my friend Bill Robillard and I presented an introduction to a folding portable workbench he had commissioned me to make for him.  It is a problem I have been working on for many years, having to this point worked my way through three prototype generations.

photo courtesy of Joshua Klein

photo courtesy of Joshua Klein

We discussed his needs and our response to these needs, including my “butterfly” which will be covered in the upcoming issue of Popular Woodworking, in preparation for our hands-on fabrication demo on Day 3.  I will be blogging about this project at length, and posting a finished and detailed PDF for you to download ex poste. cIMG_5931

Right after lunch Sharon Que talked about fitting new replacement parts during restoration using the technique of “chalk fitting” with both a lecture presentation and a detailed and impressive demonstration down on the main floor.  Her skill left us agog, and folks were literally hanging off the balconies.

photo courtesy of Joshua Klein

photo courtesy of Joshua Klein

The middle session of the afternoon was by Jon Szalay, “Jersey Jon” from the “Pickers” television show, introducing a topic near and dear to my heart — Foundry 101.

photo courtesy of Joshua Klein

photo courtesy of Joshua Klein

Jon’s presentation took everyone outside to his setup there, and the interest was sky-high.

The afternoon wrapped up with Brian Webster, addressing the needs and strategies for web based marketing. Unfortunately my host duties took me elsewhere on the homestead for these last two presentations, but the conversations were abuzz during dinner so I know they were great.

photo courtesy of Joshua Klein

photo courtesy of Joshua Klein

After a fabulous dinner catered by the local Botkin sisters, we reconvened up on the fourth floor for my Powerpoint presentation Transition from Handwork to Machine Made Furniture based in research I did quite a while ago. cIMG_5951

As if that wasn’t enough for one day, the evening lecture was followed by a bonfire and a metal casting demonstration.

Over 16 hours after the day started, I barely remembered tumbling into bed.  Those silly folks stayed up gabbing for several more hours.