This Weekend at Chastain Park

This weekend’s show was my first one this year that was dry both days.  Saturday was overcast in the morning, but sunny all afternoon.  Sunday was beautiful all day.  Chastain Park is a great setting for a show.  The show was set up along a tree-lined street in the middle of the park and seemed to stretch forever.  There were 190 artists and the show was full of top quality work.  The promoter did a great job in getting a good mix of categories.

Customer attendance to this first year spring show was a little disappointing.  It may need a little time to mature and the promoters need to work on their strategy to get more customers in.  However, customers were buying which made it a decent weekend.  I had quite a few residents tell me how much they appreciate us being there and were excited that an event such as this had been brought to their area.   There will also be a November show that I plan to attend.

Having all the trees behind everyone’s tent made for a nice setting.

Buckhead, Here We Come!

The Buckhead Spring Festival is this weekend!!  It would be hard to find a better location in Atlanta to have a show.  This is the first year for this show so hopefully we will have a good turnout.  The promoter has done a great job with advertising, and since the show is in Chastain Park, anticipation is high.  They’re calling for isolated thunderstorms Saturday, but I’m not too concerned about it considering the accuracy of our local weather forecasters.  It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s nice all weekend.

I sold a large portion of my dipping board inventory at my last show, so I have been working on getting the numbers back up.  This is the last batch that is in the process of drying and should be ready to pack up in another day.

Never Bored

The thing I like about woodworking is the variety of challenges and projects I constantly run into.  I don’t think a woodworker ever quits learning something new every day.  We agonize over design, proportions, math, and chemistry.  We expose ourselves to harmful dust, sharp spinning blades, and hours standing on concrete floors.  But, we keep coming back each day with the desire to gain a sense of accomplishment.  We don’t get bored because there is always a project on our list or in the back of our mind.

My recently completed project is a knife display case for my brother-in-law.   He is a serious knife collector and was complaining that even though there are many display cases available, there are few high quality ones.  Most pocket knife cases hold the knife in the case with a tie wrap so it is not easy to remove the knife.  He wanted to be able to pick his knives out of the case to handle and show them off.

This case is made out of red oak and is 24” tall, 18” wide, and 4” deep.  The shelves are adjustable and have captive pins to keep the shelves from accidentally falling out.  Every knife case I looked at used a wood frame door with glass.  To be different, I used a ¼” frameless tempered glass door with the magnetic push to open/close latch.  I think it looks cleaner and allows a full view of the contents.  Instead of picture hangers on the back, I used mating cleats cut at 45 degree angles to provide a very strong wall mount system.  This case is very heavy at 20 pounds empty.  The cleat system is similar to how kitchen cabinets are mounted to the wall.  A dado was cut into the top of each shelf so that the felt sits flush instead of on top of the shelf for a cleaner look.  Overall, this thing came out very nice for my first one.

The glass door is so clean that it’s hard to tell it’s there.

Base detail

Shelf pin details

My one little knife sitting on the shelf

Low on Inventory

I’m back slaving away in the shop to build my inventory up from the Inman Park show.  Everything sold well, but it was obvious that everyone liked the walnut end grain cutting boards because they sold completely out.   I made a trip to my lumber supplier last week and stocked back up on 6/4 and 4/4 walnut and started ripping and gluing boards.    I never know what a walnut end grain board is going to look like until I start oiling it.  Each one is different and varies from impressive to highly dramatic.  This finished batch has some highly dramatic grain patterns.