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It was 113 degrees when we pulled into town the afternoon before the show. According to the car's dash display, we had hit 118 about an hour and a half north of town. But hey, it was a dry heat... The Convention Center is absolutely enormous, and the AWFS® show staff took full advantage of the venue. It was comfortably cool throughout, well organized and easy to navigate. The Association of Woodworking & Furnishings Suppliers (AWFS) is "the largest national trade association in the U.S. representing the interests of the broad array of companies that supply the home and commercial furnishings industry". The Association's trade show, AWFS® Fair, is held every other year in Las Vegas and is designed to "bring together the entire home and commercial furnishings industry, including manufacturers and distributors of machinery, hardware, plastics, lumber, construction materials and other suppliers to the furniture, cabinet manufacturers and custom woodworkers". WoodEzine sends a couple of representatives to the show, to see what's new and to make contact with suppliers and manufacturers of tools, machinery and materials. (You can find our 2017 show report here.) Below are just a few of the interesting items that we came across, and we'll be including many others in regular issues of WoodEzine over the next few months. |
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The Fresh Wood student furniture competition at AWFS celebrates outstanding construction and design achievements by students from leading high school and post-secondary woodworking programs in North America. Nearly four dozen winners were announced in various categories. A Nautical Marquetry Table by Nicholas Maraldo (right) won Best of Show, and the 2019 People’s Choice award went to Hard Ninety (left) by Cole Daniels, which is an originally designed shuffleboard with intricate paneling and accenting. Nicholas is a student at the Furniture Institute of Massachusetts, and Cole attends Rolla Technical Institute in Missouri. |
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The L5 No Lock Air Lock fence from Northtech Machine in Borden, Indiana took home a Visionary New Product Award at AWFS. The company says it's the quickest and easiest fence on the market. It eliminates the need for hand wheels and manual locks. A woodworker simply places a hand on the fence to disengage the auto lock, moves it into position, and then removes his/her hand to lock it into the new location. This could be a serious time saver, especially on a rip saw. Northtech says that it can be fitted to almost any brand of straight line rip saw or table saw. We found a very short video about it on YouTube that was uploaded by Martin's Woodworking Machinery in New York, and we took the screen shots at left from that video. Woodworkers can contact Martin's at 243-7167 (area code 607) for more info, or to place an order. |
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A few months ago, Blum decided to change the way that we build kitchens. The company's new Aventos HK hardware allows the doors on wall cabinets to pivot up, rather than being hinged on the sides and swinging left or right. A homeowner lift ups from the bottom, and the door swings up and out of the way. Then it stays wherever one stops lifting. There is other hardware that does something similar, but none does it better. The doors open out of the way, allowing the cook to easily see everything in the upper cabinets. Nobody needs to dodge an open door, and people passing each other in confined quarters can now simply slide below an open door, rather than trying to navigate around it. As people age, their range of motion changes. Aventos accommodates that because it stays where it's put. |
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Knowing what colors are trending is essential in an industry where fewer than half the cabinets being built are clear-coated hardwood or veneer. Axalta is a big wheel in the automotive coatings world, but it's also very active in wood finishes. The Philadelphia manufacturer formally introduced its next generation of Amarium pre-catalyzed lacquers at AWFS, and also its new wood color collection called Wood Vibes: Terra. The latter was "inspired by elements of nature, with earth tones emerging in popularity throughout 2019". It's a series of color collections focused on home fashion trends. Shown here is the Cozy Griege page from the downloadable color guide, which woodshops will find useful when offering custom colors to paint-finish casework clients. The company says its Amarium lacquers "are known for their ease of use, fast dry time and durability. These lacquers also offer excellent clarity and provide enhanced UV protection, and this premium, single component finish is ideal for cabinets, furniture, and other interior wood surfaces". |
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Grex Power Tools says that "size matters". And that's perhaps especially when it comes to a 23-gauge headless pinner, which is a tool that drives the finest pin nail possible. Having a lightweight, compact tool is critical to achieving precision in finish and trim work. Grex cordless technology finally makes it possible to create a cordless version of this tool that does everything a shop demands. The new Grex GCP650 is the first and only cordless, 2" 23-guage headless pinner, with no compromise on power. It is similar in size, weight, balance and power to a traditional pneumatic tool, without the hose. Plus, it has the same award winning robust build quality that users have trusted for more than twenty years. That's probably why it just won a Visionary New Product Award at AWFS. |
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Pony Jorgensen was founded in 1903 in Chicago, and went on to become a great old name in the clamping business. A couple of years ago, the brand looked like it would be lost forever to woodworkers. Then a Chinese company came in and bought the assets - the same corporation that owns Arrow Fastener and several other familiar brands. We spoke with product manager Gregg Malanga at the Pony Jorgensen booth at AWFS, and were delighted to hear that the effort to reintroduce these fabled tools, and manufacture them using the same highly accurate original machinery at the Saddle Brook, New Jersey plant, is still on track. The new catalog includes familiar orange bar clamps, C-clamps, pipe clamp fixtures and spring clamps, to name a few. And they're being carried by retailers such as Grizzly, Rockler, Wurth and Lowes. Welcome back! |
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In 2019 the Altendorf Group set up its own dealer network and a branch office in the USA. Now owners of sliding table saws are paying a lot of attention to the company's new MAGIS and MAGIS Opti software packages. MAGIS is the new digital, graphical, operator system that guides users through predefined cutting sequences to save both time and material. And MAGIS Opti is an optimisation software for PCs and tablets that Altendorf especially developed for sliding table saws. It creates a broad range of options to meet customers’ needs, and make sliding table saw operations more economical. It requires Windows 10 or higher. Altendorf also recently acquired the German manufacturer of high-quality edge banding machines, Hebrock. |
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Next Wave Automation introduced Virtual Zero Unlimited at AWFS. The new patented software from the Perrysburg, Ohio CNC manufacturer allows a woodworker to map the entire surface of raw material (a board, sheet stock etc.) by registering an unlimited number of reference points. The program then uses these points to auto-adjust the G-code to conform to the actual surface of that material. This eliminates problems caused by even slightly warped or bowed material and also allows a user to maintain a constant cutting depth on oddly or intricately shaped projects - something that would usually require the creation of a CAD 3D model. Virtual Zero Unlimited was a Visionary Award finalist. Also being shown at the booth was the new Moray Ready2Laser®. This is an affordable desktop laser for engraving that allows users to create files from almost any image. |
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Pinless Meter has Bluetooth™, Lots More Another Visionary New Product Award winner, the Orion® 950 Smart Pinless wood moisture meter comes from Wagner Meters in Rogue River, Oregon. This is the pinnacle achievement of the Orion line, incorporating all of the outstanding features of the 910, 920, 930, and 940 while adding breakthrough new functions like Bluetooth connectivity to free smart device apps, an ambient temperature/RH (relative humidity) sensor, and Equilibrium Moisture Content (EMC) calculation. A flexible rubber boot makes the 950 durable enough to withstand the toughest jobs. And it has true in-the-field calibration capability with the included On-Demand Calibrator. That lets an operator calibrate it anywhere in about 30 seconds. And it can calculate if a wood specimen is at the critical threshold where it has reached its equilibrium with the environment, and will no longer gain or lose moisture. |
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We stopped by the Vac-U-Clamp booth and chatted with the company president, Barney Rigney. He said he started the business about 30 years ago in a production furniture shop, and every now and then he'd have to build some tool that just wasn’t available. He eventually realized that it was a lot more fun building machines than case goods. In Barney's opinion a vacuum, properly applied, can be the most effective energy power source in any shop or factory. Today, he and his team produce a broad line of vacuum laminating and forming products that are used in industries other than woodworking, such as aircraft and custom yachts manufacturing, and signage. |
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