Canberra Working With Wood Show
Friday afternoon saw me heading off to the Canberra Timber and working with Wood show at Exhibition Park in Canberra (EPIC) This show is a woody’s delight with manufacturers showcasing their latest products, and lots of show specials. It is also the place to pick up specialist timbers not normally available – such as the bizarre purple heart and a good range of myrtles. And there are some great demos – how to sharpen your tools, new finishing products, how to use dovetailers and of course the great Triton work bench.
Timbecon, pictured here was one of my first points of call – I remembered from last year that they had a copy attachment for a lathe and headed over to see if they had any at a good price. They were apologetic that they couldn’t demo it as they had just lost power to that part of the pavilion, but I mainly wanted to see how it was fixed to the lathe to work out if it would fit my Chinese Rhino lathe…
There were also some great displays from Bungendore wood gallery, the ANU School of Art – Wood workshop, Sturt University and Canberra Institute of Technology.
This delightful sideboard was part of the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT) display
And Stan Ceglinski was back showing traditional bodger’s craft techniques – in this case how to build a bench using nothing more than a draw knife and a home-made chopping knife, an axe and a two-handled crosscut saw. Here is his bodger’s bench used for clamping components in position for shaping…
And to prove they sell timber at the timber and working with wood show:
I also had a long chat with an inventor who had developed a lathe attachment for turning ovals – this was at the stand for ornamental turners, and there were some amazing Heath Robinson lathe contraptions for making spiral patterns and scallops while turning. Here is the oval-turning lathe in action
So what did I wind up with?? Having saved my pennies for some time, I bought two major items and a couple of small things. Firstly, yes I did buy a copy attachment for my lathe – and it does fit the el-cheepo Rhino Chinese lathe (also marketed as GMC and several other brands) with a little timber packing around the clamping device.
The other thing was stand for the Ryobi planer/thicknesser that I bought two years ago at the same show – this enables wood to be fed in on a roller and out on a matching roller, keeping long lengths under control. It also raises the thicknesser to a good height to use while standing – this one I bought from the CarbaTec booth. They also have a shop in the Canberra suburb of Fyshwick.
So that was another good working with wood show – and it continues until Sunday…
Cheers
Jerry
