I had some time off I needed to burn before the end of the year, and was able to take one day to take the hour and a half drive and head down to Mystic, CT October 30 to attend the Lie-Nielsen Tool Event. My goal, being new to woodworking, was to get as much education as I could. I wanted to see what a quality plane should feel like. This show certainly exceeded my expectations.

Deneb Puchalski from Lie-Nielsen was demonstrating how to flatten a rough piece of walnut. He would go through each of his steps in good detail as he prepped the walnut using a scrub plane, then the low angle jack plane with toothed blade, switch out the blades to a standard one, then move on to the #8 jointer, then the #4 1/2 smoother, using techniques using pencil lines to help you see where material was being removed, etc. Once he did the demo, the piece was flipped over and it was our turn to actually do some work! Not only did I get to use the plane, but Deneb was great about providing tips and help us correct mistakes in our technique. Nothing like hands-on experience!

Most of my time was spent at that bench, but I also did have the opportunity to talk with Bob Zajicek from Czeck Edge Hand Tools. Bob gave me a good demo on how to sharpen a card scraper… I have the card scraper, just need a burnisher now…

Some pics I took with my phone (yes, I forgot the regular camera)…

Show was in the building in the background.

Deneb during his demonstration.

The assortment of hand tools.

Our turn…

Some of those shavings are MINE…

Czeck Edge Hand Tools.