Woodworking in America show
What: A trade show and conference featuring 65 exhibitors and national speakers, plus John Sindelar's Traveling Tool Museum showcasing rare antique tools
When: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sept. 30 and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Oct. 1 for the Marketplace and conference; 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Oct. 2 for the conference
Where: Northern Kentucky Convention Center
Cost: $10 daily for the marketplace ($8 when ordered online); $395 for the full conference or $175 per day
For more info: www.woodworkinginamerica.com
Warren County resident Bob Lang says if you like and appreciate woodworking, there is a trade show coming to the Northern Kentucky Convention Center from Friday to Oct. 2 that you don’t want to miss.
“For our little geek corner of the world, this is kind of like the Super Bowl,” said Lang, executive editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine, which is sponsoring the Woodworking in America event. “There really isn’t anything like this.”
This is the fourth year the Cincinnati-based magazine has produced the show. It started in Berea, Ky., but quickly outgrew that location after two years and is expected to attract between 2,500 and 3,000 woodworkers from around the country for its return to the convention center located just across the Ohio River from downtown Cincinnati.
While there have been tool trade shows in the past in the Cincinnati area, this is the only regional conference that brings in nationally known speakers, including Roy Underhill from the 30-year-old PBS show “The Woodwright’s Shop.”
Lang, of Landen, is one of the presenters and an author of eight woodworking books, including the e-book “Woodworker’s Guide to Google SketchUp,” which he will focus on in his four sessions.
“Bob’s a great woodworker and really one of the authorities on that in the country,” said Steve Shanesy, publisher of Popular Woodworking Magazine, which has about 140,000 subscribers.
Lang’s e-book shows how the program’s 3-D capabilities on the computer help woodworkers before they start work on a piece of furniture.
“You can take something apart and look at it from any angle,” said Lang, who has lived in Warren County for six years. “When you build a piece of furniture, the sequence of steps you go through, what parts you make first, what parts you make at the end, becomes important. It’s easy to get a step too far ahead, then have to go back and redo something. Working with SketchUp, it eliminates that kind of thing.”
Lang also is an expert in Arts & Crafts furniture from the early 1900s. For his ninth book that is almost finished, he studied a collection in North Carolina in May, then spent the summer making the drawings of the furniture for the book.
The Cincinnati show is broken into two parts. The classes and speakers package costs $395 for the weekend or $175 per day. The marketplace costs $10 to attend ($8 online in advance) and features 65 different exhibitors.
“There’s been a real resurgence in the last 10 years of very high quality hand tools,” Lang said. “So there are little companies scattered around the country that make very nice tools that are very specialized. Most of their business is online or through mail order. It’s hard for the average woodworker to see this stuff in the flesh. One of the things people love about the show is it’s all right there.”
Attendees will be able to try out many of the tools and see demonstrations.
“There’s a lot of personal attention, and you can stand there and have a great conversation with the guy who is actually making the tools,” Shanesy said. “So it’s educational as well as just a buy-and-sell show.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 483-5245 or tcox@coxohio.com.