Looks like Mike Duchaj beat me to the punch, but he didn't have the 6-1/2
hour drive I had (thank you downtown Chicago traffic) and I am sure he had
a lot more sleep than me...

Saturday morning dawned bright and early and as always when I get involved
with one of Slav's schemes, I showed up way earlier than expected (stupid
Daylight Savings Time, we used to be the same time as Chicago in the
summer, now we're an hour ahead), so I am partly to blame for the
cleanliness of the shop...

The first wave arrived in the late morning and included Mike "The Rat"
Urness with the fixings for Sushi, Wes Groot, Mike Duchaj, Matt Mulka and a
cast of characters that I have since forgotten due to lack of sleep and a
bad memory, which is probably a welcome thing as not everyone may have
wanted to be identified due to outstanding warrants, unpaid traffic
tickets, terrorist profiling, etc.
While Mr. Urness created the sushi (AKA bait food, per Slav and Ralph
Brendler), I guarded the table from the very curious and apparently
ravenously hungry shop cats. While that was going on, there was lots of
talking, drooling over tools and wood, and the general unorganized chaos
and laughter that happens when a bunch of galoots get together.

About 5 PM the second shift arrived consisting of Ralph Brendler, Mark Van
Roojen and Russ Allen. They arrived with a Stickley rocking chair that Mark
had found at a flea market and would not let go of until Ralph had bought
it. There was quite a bit of visiting, show and tell, BS'ing and an
in-depth discussion of how to fix the loose tenon in Ralph's chair, and
what to do with the genuine original Stickley bailing wire holding the
bottom of said chair together. I always knew that guys were capable of
mentally undressing cute members of the opposite sex, but I had never met
guys that mentally disassembled chairs before.
The next day (after only 3-1/2 hours sleep) we loaded up and headed to
Garfield farms for tool pillaging. The day did not start very auspiciously,
since it was pouring down rain when I arrived. But after some more BS'ing,
visiting under the bottom porch of the main house and breakfast, the rain
finally broke and the field slowly opened.
For those of you who have never been to a sanctioned tool meet, be prepared
for some pretty serious sensory overload. I have been training myself to
listen carefully for the sound old iron makes when it is moved around at
garage sales, and I think my ears were seriously overloaded that day.
Because of the rain, the tools were slow to come out, so the crowd was
moving from one site to another all at the same time as each dealer set up
his stuff.

After about 2 hours of wandering around, Ralph, Wes, Russ and Mark were
kind enough to invite me to breakfast where we met up with Mike Lindgren,
and of course, more BSing, tool acquisition stories, etc went on.

At the meet, I ended up getting a #191 rabbet plane, complete with nicker
and depth stop to help my #192 feel less lonely, and a complete #71 to be a
friend to the #71-1/2 I already own, not that I am anthropomorphizing my
tools at all....

Highlights -

Some great Mike Urness sushi.

Relieving Ralph Brendler of his old lathe (unfortunately SWMBO and the
neighbor that usually helps unload heavy stuff are both out of town so the
lathe table is still riding around with me in the back of the van). Yes it
is electron powered, but I bought a couple of other hand tools to make up
for it.

Seeing Mark Van Roojens' very gizmonic automatic door morticing machine.

Seeing Russ Allen's 50 cent perfect condition Stanley 79 from a garage
sale.

Seeing Ralph ID a piece of chipboard from across the room as quilted maple
(evidently beer goggles make wood look better, too)

Getting a personal tour of Peter Ambrose the abstract woodcarvers studio
next door to Slavs (Thanks, Wes!)

Watching Mark Van Roojen order crepes with "way more powdered sugar than
you would ever expect anyone to use" (direct quote to the waitress) for
them and then use most of it.

Seeing Slav play his role as file and wood pusher, by leaving files and
beutiful chunks of wood everywhere.

Getting to meet in person many of the list denizens that I had only met
on-line.

I have a few pictures, but they are locked up in the camera right now,
hopefully I will get some time in the next few days to post them to Galoot
Central.

Gary Maze

Looking forward to next year already

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