This exhibition of the latest woodworking equipment, demonstrations and stacks of timber is one of the must-see events if you are a woodworker – whether hobbyist or semi professional.
As you arrive, there are demonstrations of the Lucas saw mill, and the Swedex Logosol mini saw mill. This latter made short work of a large log using a chainsaw mounted in a frame that holds the saw horizontal for cutting slabs. The whole thing is adjustable for slab thickness and slope of the log. Very impressive for such a small mill.
Once inside I went in search of lumber – I have in mind to make a couple of musical instruments – another pochette fiddle and a travel mandolin. Trend Timbers was my first and primary stop as they had some lovely birdseye maple and rosewood. I also found blackwood, silkwood and purpleheart. But alas no spruce. It seems I have to go to Sydney for that, or order it on the internet. I also got the last piece of American sycamore in captivity in Canberra.
The guys there were very friendly and helpful – they even helped me carry my acquisitions to the parcel pick-up place. And I learned that Brazil is the only country to be named after a timber! Brazil wood was known before the country had a (Western) name.
There were great demonstrations and seminars – don’t miss the chair making one by Richard Vaughan titled ‘Seat yourself’. Richard Raffan and Bruce Bell did wood turning demos and Roger Givkin showed off his dovetail jig and demonstrated the art of small box making.
While there are many great new toys out there, one really stood out for me this year – the SawStop. This is amazing and will save countless fingers from being injured by table saws. A small electrical current passes through the saw blade, and trips a sensor as soon as the blade touches flesh rather than wood. Within 5milliseconds – ten times faster than a car airbag deploys in an accident, and seven times faster than we blink, a gas charge propels an aluminium brake into the saw blade and the whole blade drops below the table. I just had to film this demonstration:
I hope every educational institution teaching woodworking buys this as it will save countless hands from serious injury.
There was a great selection of books at the Australian Woodworker stand – and you could pick up any back issues you missed on the news stands.
If you are into bush crafts there wasStan Ceglinski with his crosscut saw race – but he is also very skilled with a riving knife too!
There were also demonstrations of pole-lathe woodturning
and demos of chair making by a master bodger using green wood and a draw-knife
But in case you thought it was all about rough timber – there were excellent displays of fine woodworking from the ANU School of Art and Sturt universities and ACT Woodcraft. For example there was this beautiful cabinet…
If you are into boats – then the Cape Boatworks is a must visit – they are building a canoe from wood strips through the course of the weekend. It’s the first day and the canoe is already well advanced!
And I came away with new knowledge – and a small stash of rather special timber
And a couple of useful chisels…
Cheers
Jerry
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David Nergaard’s 1922 Stanley steamer had lain abandoned for many years to decay until it was found in the 1950s. At that point a custom body was built for it and the steam plant installed. The car is regularly driven and David puts about 5000 miles per year on the clock.
The Powerhouse museum encompasses a massive collection of technology and design. One aspect of particular interest is the computer and telecommunications collection.
Before the Internet, there was the Victorian internet – the telegraph. One of the more sophisticated telegraph machines is this one – the Wheatstone 5-needle telegraph. It was a combination transmitter and receiver, and was used used on English railways. This one was made c. 1837 – 1842.
The needles were activated in pairs by electromagnets to point to the letters. Perhaps this was the sort of machine used by Abraham Lincoln when he checked his t-mail (telegraph mail)
Another radical development was the Apple computer – the first version was built in 1976 in Steve Wozniak’s garage along with Steve Jobs, later joined by Daniel Kottke, Randy Wigginton and others. They made 200 of them – but it was the start of a personal computer revolution.
Each was handmade and users built them into a small case – bearing some resemblance to the ‘enigma’ encoding machine used by the Germans in WWII. Storage was by cassette audio tape, and a TV was the monitor. The machine used a MOS Technology 6502 motherboard with 8kb of RAM. The later ones used a Motorola 6800 board.
Then came telepresence in the form of virtual reality technology – remember the VR cafes of the 1990s? This was the start of truly immersive 3D environments. The accompanying data glove enabled the user to interact with the environment and fight dinosaurs and the like. When these were around I remember people complaining that the refresh rate was too slow and that the sense of disconnected movement gave people motion sickness. But it was a major step forward in immersive environment technology.
The Powerhouse is well worth a visit – check out the ‘Wedge’ 3D environment – one of the prototypes developed by the Australian National University.
It is open every day except Christmas day 10.00am-5.00pm, and is located at 500 Harris Street, Ultimo, Sydney NSW. There is an admission charge – you can find the details on their website.
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on August 19th, 2008 — Posted in Journal, Writing
Feeling bookish? You want coffee and wifi with that? That spells Berkelouw’s on 19 Oxford Street, Paddington. It’s open 7 days a week, 9.00AM until late (around 11.00pm or midnight) . There are three storeys of books – second hand ones on the top floor and new, rare and antiquarian books for all tastes. It caters very well to the arts and social sciences, and the fiction is massive.
And when you’ve shopped your feet off, the coffee is great at the Berkelouw cafe upstairs. Now, I’ll let you into a secret – the free wifi at the Palace Verona – the art cinema next door – can be picked up in the coffee shop, so you can send an email or blog about your book finds to your heart’s content. And the rhubarb and apple crumble is divine.
But for us the fun was among the books – as our haul will show… because as we found, Berkelouw has a secret. As we paid for our books, we chatted briefly with the assistant, who told us about a barn. And that barn lay just outside of Berrima on our way home to Canberra. And it holds Berkelouw’s …um… overflow second hand holdings – there must be at least 100,000 of them.
So we had to make a small stop to add some ballast to the car…
So by the time we got home, we found all these books had somehow followed us all the way home – can we keep them? The hole in our wallets says yes 🙂
Posted by Jerry on August 17th, 2008 — Posted in Journal, Travel
As you walk around Sydney, it pays to be alert to the amazing art works that you can encounter. Here are three of them that I found yesterday, just by walking around.
Brett Whiteley’s matches – titled “Almost Once” – This sculptural work can be found at the Domain. While Whiteley is known more for his paintings and wall panels, such as the ‘American Dream’ – now in the Art Gallery of Western Australia – or his views of Sydney Harbour, he also made sculptures. The two matches – one unused, and one burnt set up a contrast between potential and extinguishment, life and death, future and hindsight. And all this can be viewed while eating your sandwiches and resting on the lawn. They were erected in 1991 behind the Art Gallery of New South Wales. They are made from blackbutt timber and fibreglass.
Bert Flugelman’s sculpture is encountered almost by accident in a side street in the Rocks. He was famed for his stainless ball stack in Adelaide’s Rundle Mall, but this one mirrors in broken facets the surrounding chaotic high-rise development in Sydney. It is known colloquially as the “shish kebab” and was constructed in 1978. It was originally located in Martin Place, but has since been moved to its current location in Spring Street. Flugelman was born in Vienna in 1923, but moved to Australia before WWII.
The third is a street mural in black and white of a laneway taken from a 1901 photograph. It was commissioned by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority and was paited by Pierre Mol of Artempire. The scene is an image of Brown Bear Lane, later called Little Essex Street. It’s original name was taken from a pub of that name that existed on that site between 1804 and 1901. The pub was demolished the 1950s to make way for the City Circle railway and Cahill Expressway. As I took the photo a woman stepped into the frame about to cross the road – it looks as though she has just stepped out of the 1901 scene into modern Sydney!
