Woodwrights School day 1

Wednesday night “Planes for Joinery” with Roy Underhill, Bill Anderson, and Elia.  3/10/2010

Showing up at the Woodwright School was a little intimidating because it felt like every one already knew each other, and I was walking in cold.  Everyone was very friendly, but it was a little overwhelming at first.  There was some apparent “technical” difficulties going on, as in the guest presenter forgot his outline/class notes.  I was amused to witness the famous Roy of the Hand Tools busting out his Macbook Pro, and portable printer to run off a couple copies.  Soon they got started, and it was Planes Planes Planes.  The presenter who I had to look up on the site, just launched right into it.   He and Roy tag teamed the presentation throughout the night, with the guy some have started calling “the Apostle” helping out.

Another amusing thing was when Roy busts out the camera and the LCD tv (artfully hidden behind a blackboard on the wall) and doing extreme close up shots of some of the plane work.  It was pretty cool (and education), and might have detracted a little from the old timey feel of the shop, but I’ll let that go in the name of education.  Roy was pretty energetic, if not a little… OK, a LOT tired from teaching a full day class already that day.  He was still Roy though, and it was great to see him in person.

I did get a moment of stunned silence when they found out I was from all the way out Seattle way.  The question came up when Roy was talking about his favorite plane, the moving fillister plane.  He said you could still get them for about $40, and I couldn’t hold back a snort.  He was puzzled  by my reaction and asked why?  I told him about the total of 2 of those planes I’d seen, and that they went for over $100 easily and were usually busted.  I got lots of sympathy at that, and Roy immediately went to get me a flier for a tool collectors group.

Later after the class went to “hands on” portion I got to talk to Roy a bit, and he was very nice to me.  Some times when you meet an idol, you find out that the people they are on TV or whatever are not the person they are in life.  Not so with Roy, and I enjoyed the evening very much.  We did get to talk about the moving fillister plane a bit (more on that later) and he showed me what to look for in used ones. He was also amazed that I came all the way out there for his class, and joked about how the pressure was on now.

More later on the next day in another post…

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