The Phantom Woodworking Show

[Kerry Drake]

Saturday my wife and I got up early (for us, on a Saturday) and hit the road to drive down to Marlborough, Massachusetts to attend a woodworking show I had found online a few weeks ago. We made the 86 miles drive in bright sunshine and good spirits, arriving at our destination 10 minutes before the show was scheduled to start that day (the website advertising a 3 day event, Fri - Sun).

Imagine our surprise to show up and find an empty ... nay, a desolately deserted ... parking lot (I mean this was just a tumble-weed away from spooky). The event center was associated with a hotel set in the same complex so we drove up to the hotel and found out, sure enough, no woodworking show. The hotel told us the show had moved to Connecticut this year and we were the 5th person they had turned away so far.

I later sent an e-mail to the publishers of the website and they responded with an appology, wanting to know how I had come across that page as it was just a test page. My responce: "google". They did get my address and are supposed to sending me tickets to the "Big E", witch is a big show in Boston every January.

Not to be denied my woodworking fix, I grabbed my GPS unit and pulled up the address for the local Rockler store. That worked out kind of nice as I had not been there before (I have a Rockler and a Woodcraft within an hour of my house). So we got to roam around the Rockler for a while and walked out happy, but poorer. At least I got some change.

But I got some neat stuff:

[Tony Peters]

I picked up a bunch of the triangles. First project was the drawer fronts painted both sides. I've used them over and over and over ever since but they aren't yellow anymore.

[Russ Scheer]

"Kid in a candy store, kid in a candy store" (haha) actually james has a good idea. But my thing was 3inch squares of 3/4 plywood with a single finishing nail/brad in the center and you put them in the corners or edges. Its a flexible application not limited to size and you can use as many as you need subject to weight. The more contact points you have the more likely you will leave a mark

[Kerry Drake]

I've only had a chance to use them once, but they worked very well for me. I was actually only 3 at a time to support the drawer fronts for the built in while I stained them (they come in packs of 10 and I was doing 3 fronts at a time, so it was 3, 3, and 4 pyaramids per drawer front). I could see NO discernable marks left on "down" face when I was done.

[Don Grubish]

Do you guys like/recommend those drying pyramids?