WIA Day 1 – Stumpy Nubs

I am not a morning person, and thanks to the WIA home page hotel reservations we found ourselves staying more than 20 miles away from the conference hotel.  Check: lesson learned.  Make your own reservations.

This all comes together in that the first session on Day 1 of WIA was one I very much wanted to attend, and in fact I made it only a few minutes late.  Mostly that might be due to the facts that 1) it was Friday morning rush hour, that 2) the road signage in greater KC is among the worst I have ever encountered and Google and Mapquest merely compound the problem with incomprehensible directions, and 3) my ambulatory speed was set to 0.1.  I think it took more than fifteen minutes for me to get from the parking garage into the exhibit hall, then up a flight of stairs and across the long balcony to the conference room.

Nevertheless I get to the presentation of James “Stumpy Nubs” Hamilton probably five minutes after he started.  The title for the session was something like “Make Your Own Woodworking Machines” and based on the riches of information from his web site I figured it would be a lot of fun.  And it was!  Two hours of jigs and home made devices was a total gas.  Yes, I have been steadily moving towards hand-tool primacy in my own work, but I do have a pretty complete machine capability in The Barn, and to quote hand tool star Vic Tesolin, “Of course I love machines, I’m a guy!”

The Stumpy Nubs session was indeed a trove of motivational treasures.  In particular I am prompted to finally build the horizontal drum sander I can use when preparing the yards and yards of veneer strips I produce for executing Roubo-style parquetry.  I’ve already thought of a couple of ways I can tweak their design to better suit my own needs.  This will please ol’Stump to no end as he probably views his role as evangelist and innovation encourager, taking delight in seeing his ideas taken to new heights.  I’ve already got the basic ingredients in-hand: hyper-curiosity, a stash of electric motors and machine parts, and lots of Baltic Birch plywood.

Mrs. Barn and I also had a wonderful time later chatting with Jim and his dad Mike in their booth over in the Exhibit Hall.