My wife and I are currently on a trip to Las Vegas for some R&R and to visit with some old friends and will be heading home on Saturday. Over the last 2 days we spent about 8 hours at the “Association of Woodworking and Furnishing Suppliers Fair†that is happening at the Las Vegas Convention Center this week. We could have spent longer but we have some other plans for the next 2 days so that's all the time we could be there. The AWFS Fair is the largest event of this type in the nation and is held every year with it being in Atlanta,Georgia in even years and in Las Vegas, Nevada in odd years. It is not your typical woodworking show as it is not geared to the individual woodworker but to the manufacturing side of woodworking on both large and small scale. The vendors have products from a wide range of different types of production machinery and tools as well as dealing with software for design and business operation and hardware and furnishings such as hinges, drawer pulls, door lifts, slide outs and other speciality hardware. They also have many vendors that deal with the finishing side of things ranging from your typical finishes that we buy through our local woodworking store or home center (General Finishes, Deft, Valspar, etc.) to specialty finishes and also veneers and synthetic tape/sheets that has the appearance of wood and is overlaid on a lower grade wood substrate and panels. They also have vendors dealing in spraying equipment ranging from small detail guns up to huge pieces of machinery that you put unfinished cabinet doors in one end and they come out the other end finished and dried all done with high tech sensors that can tell the shape and size of each piece and spay the finish only on the piece so there is little waste of the finish. They also have many different types of hardwood, plywood and veneer suppliers as well as engineered lumber and synthetic products for specialty molding, trim, cabinetry and panels for the home building industry as well as the manufactured home and RV industries. There were so many different types of products that I can’t begin to name them all.

 

Along with all this they also had all the big name tool manufactures of the woodworking tools that we use in our shops every day. Powermatic/Jet, Fein, Delta, Bosch, Laguna, Festool, Steel City, General Machinery, Saw Stop, Rikon, Kreg, Grex, Senco and others all had a strong presence there with lots of power tools to touch with lots of representatives to answer any and all questions. There were a number of the major wood working magazines there including Wood Magazine, Fine Woodworking, American Woodworker, Woodshop News and Woodworker West. I did get to chat awhile with Jim Heavey from Wood Magazine on Wednesday but I did not get to see Bob Hunter from Wood Magazine as he was out roaming the halls and playing with tools. I am sure that Bob H. will be making a detailed report next week on all he saw there at the show including a lot of information about new tools that were there by many of the tool manufacturers. There were a number of main line wood working stores and online retailers there including Rockler, Woodcraft, Woodworker’s Supply, Woodpeckers, Klingspor and others.

 

For me, I didn’t quite know what to expect about this show, but I have to say that my wife and I had a really good time and we filled up a backpack each day with various literature, catalogs and hand outs from the different vendors we met and chatted with along the way. I caught my wife on a number of occasions looking longingly at some the displays of cabinets and furnishings so that spells a lot more work on the horizon for me. There were a couple of things that I really wanted to see at the show. One of them was Steel City’s display as I have been eyeballing their mortising machine online and it has had a lot of good reviews. I had not been able to finger print any of Steel City’s machines before and I have to say that I am very impressed with all of their machines. They have come out with a number of new tools including a few different models of table saws with seamless solid steel tops. All of their stuff appeared to me to up to similar quality of the bigger boys. I also was looking for options of being able to set up a spraying booth in my garage without just hanging blue plastic tarps from the ceiling. I came across one vendor that sells plastic curtains and ceiling mounted frames (think hospital curtains) which can be slide out of the way when not in use. Their prices were very reasonable (at least in my mind) for an enclosure 10’x10’x10’ for about $300 including the rails and hardware. I was impressed with what I saw, but will be doing more research. The company is called “Goff’s Curtain Walls†and their site is http://www.goffscurtainwalls.com .There were not a lot of vendors who sold products at the show but there were some. I had been wanting to pick up a Japanese flush cutting 2 edged saw for trimming dowels and pins for some time now and they had a vendor there with all kinds of them. So I played around with one and got to flush cut some dowels that they had in a flat piece of sample wood and it was a thing of beauty leaving zero marks on the wood. So I picked one up to bring home with me for $17.

One of the biggest trends that I saw at this show is the dramatic increase in the number of more affordable smaller sized CNC and Laser machines designed for personal use and for smaller shops. Now “affordable†is a rather broad term here, but there were some of them dropping out of the clouds of the $3,000+ range and down to where us mere mortals could realistically contemplate one. Some of these have software packages where you can take a digital photo from your camera and then download the file to your lap top computer into the software and then attach a USB cable from the computer to the CNC machine and click “START†and away it goes just like your printer at home. No programming knowledge necessary and the results are amazing!

 

One of the funnier things to see there is that they have “Belt Sander Racingâ€. They have a 75’ long track and then they have different divisions of belt sanders with them making the 75’ run from less than 3 seconds for the “Hot Rods†up to about 6 seconds for the more stock versions. They were doing the races later in the day so we were not able to partake in the festivities.

 

So that is a snap shot of my experience at the AWFS Fair. It was a lot of fun and we walked a lot so my dogs are barking. I have a few photos below but they didn’t turn out too well as I took my small camera and the lighting made it difficult to get really clear shots. But you should get the idea. So if you have the opportunity to attend one of the AWFS Fairs in either Atlanta in 2012 or in Las Vegas in 2013 do it! It is a lot of fun.

 

Just one of many HUGE commercial machines on site. There were big machines that you would feed in a full sheet of of plywood or MDF and out would come all the parts for a chair or anything else. They also had all different types of edge banding machines as well as mortise and tenon, dovetail and box joint machines, sanders and machines I had no idea what they did do.

 

 

Bosch Tools had some new tools and I got to play with their newest "Glide" 12" miter saw that runs on pivots (if that's the right word) as opposed to rails. It was scary smooth in its operation.

 

Powermatic/Jet and Fein: Powermatic had their top of the line machines out there Fein was going like gang busters with all kinds of demos on their multi-tool and they were always busy.

 

 

Rikon Tools: Got to look at their bands saws that some of you boys have been raving about. Those are really nice!

 

 

Laguna Tools had some nice stuff but they didn't seem to have much going on as they were quiet every time we walked by.

 

 

Delta Tools: They had pretty much their full line out there with more staff than just about any other manufacturer. They were busy all day long.

 

 

Jim Heavey from Wood Magazine in the blue shirt working the crowd at the Wood Magaine booth.

 

 

One of the various kitchen displays. They had some really cool door lifts as well as self closing hinges and drawers. Talk about smooth!

 

 

Belt Sander Track

 

 

"Hot Rod" Belt Sander. 75' in less than 3 seconds.

 

Allen

Thanks for a wonderful post and photos. So very interesting. Wished I could have made it to the affair but this is almost as good. I hope you and the Mrs. had a great time. With her eyeballing the newer kitchen cabinets and all, maybe you could talk her into a bigger garage? Just kidding. Congrats on picking up the saw too, I have 2 of them in my shop and they make things so very nice. Thanks again for the post and photos.

 

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Wayne Mahler
God bless and protect our troops that serve so we can be free.

Allen, that is an awesome report. Thanks for being our roving reporter their at the show. Can't wait to get more information from you and your take on some of the new tools you saw. Are you there for more than one day?

 

Love the belt sander

 

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John Moody
John Moody Woodworks
http://www.johnmoodywoodworks.com

John,

The show runs from Wednesday through Saturday and we will be heading home tomorrow (Saturday). We spent about 8 hours total over Wednesday and Thursday at the show. Today was my wife's day as she loves to walk around and see the different hotels and walk through some of the shopping centers that they have in them. So we just got back from walking about 7 miles in and out of the hotels with the 110 degree heat, so we are a bit bushed for the day. But we may go back to the show tomorrow for a little while to look at a few things that we were not able to get to before heading back home.

We always have fun together when we go to the woodworking shows, but this one was more fun than any of them. We will be going back again in 2013 when if comes back to Vegas.

Thanks for the writeup and pictures Allen. Good to get the perspective of the average Joe in the show. Would love to be there. bob

 

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Bob Kloes
www.bobkloes.com

Allen, great report!!! I felt like I was there walking the floor with you. Have you ever thought of writing for a woodworking publication!  And the pics are great as always. About the beltsander races, I have seen races where grown men actually sit on them, was this the case at with this series?

 

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John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

No, these were just the belt sanders by themselves.

John Morris said:

Allen, great report!!! I felt like I was there walking the floor with you. Have you ever thought of writing for a woodworking publication!  And the pics are great as always. About the beltsander races, I have seen races where grown men actually sit on them, was this the case at with this series?

 

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John Morris

The Patriot Woodworker

gotta LOVE those belt sander racers

I had a great time at the show as well. Nice post