Chapter Demonstration at Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event

[Mark Maleski]

The SAPFM Chesapeake Chapter we will be demonstrating at the Lie-Nielsen event on 22-23 April 2016 @ Community Forklift in Edmonston, MD.  Tom Dugan, Jim Rendi, and I will be "manning the booth" at various times on those 2 days.   It'll be an exciting show, with the following guest demonstrators in addition to a fully-stocked Lie-Nielsen petting zoo (details on the Lie-Nielsen website):
- Dan Schwank (SAPFM member), Red Rose Reproductions
- Isaac Smith, Blackburn Toolworks
- Tico Vogt, Vogt Toolworks
- Chris Kuhn, Sterling Toolworks
- Scott Meek Woodworks

We'd welcome additional volunteers for the C-SAPFM booth, as our experience last year taught us that the most important skill is the ability to talk to the guests and tell them what excites you about SAPFM. We'll have our tri-fold, pamphlets to hand out, copies of APF and Pins&Tales, etc to make it an easy task.  If you'd like to volunteer, please email us at [email protected].  If you plan to attend the event but are not able to volunteer to represent SAPFM, please be sure to stop by and say hi to us!

Mark Maleski

 

[Mark Maleski]

The Chesapeake Chapter had a successful demonstration at the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event on 22-23 April 2016.  The crowds were steady and we spoke with a large number of attendees.  We exhibited our furniture (a Chippendale chair, tilt-top tea table, a pipe box, and a couple of our tool chests), demonstrated a variety of hand tool skills, and described near-term planned chapter activities.  There are a few "best practices" we've learned for these events:

1) Have some things of interest lying on the bench for attendees to look closely at...this draws them to the bench, and then you can start a discussion about SAPFM.  In our case this weekend, we had some carving samples, bits of molding, and various hand tools that members had brought with them.

2) Have a notepad lying out with the following written at the top of the page: "Interested in Knowing More? Leave Your Email Address!"  We set ours next to the SAPFM pamphlets, and gathered 30 email addresses of prospective members.  We've already emailed them a modified version of the standard "Welcome to SAPFM" email that we send to new members, which summarizes the benefits of SAPFM membership and describes near-term chapter activities.

Special thanks go to the members who participated: Bert and Kathy Bleckwenn, Bill Ghio, Charlie Driggs, and Tom Dugan (Tom is pictured in our "booth" below).  We also setup next to SAPFM member Dan Schwank, who had his booth for Red Rose Reproductions (custom made molding planes, panel raising planes, etc).  His booth complemented our SAPFM workshops where we demonstrated/taught how to stick molding (see next post).

 

[Mark Maleski]

The event was hosted by Community Forklift, a nonprofit reuse center for home improvement supplies.  Given their focus, when we were asked whether we'd like to present any workshops in their classroom during the event, we decided to demonstrate how to stick molding using hollows and rounds.  I taught 4 sessions over the weekend where we discussed application of custom molding and made a simple cove/fillet profile.  The largest class had 12 students...really too large for everyone to get a hands-on experience.  Others were smaller with just 3 or 4 students; in these, each participant got a chance to use the molding plane and help make the molding.  

These workshops gave us an opportunity to showcase the techniques and skills that are fostered through SAPFM.  Conveniently, our chapter planned to kick-off a members-only molding plane working group the following weekend, wherein we learn how to choose, restore, tune and use molding planes.  These workshops thus helped us present an additional benefit for local SAPFM members.

The attached photo shows the setup for these workshops.  We made good use of the SAPFM banner that ships at all Lie-Nielsen events (I believe we were the first chapter to use this!).  Unfortunately we didn't have a good workbench in the classroom and had to improvise with a tall carving bench.  The first lesson therefore was: "don't use a bench this tall for sticking molding!"