annual trek to Wichita Falls

[sheathmaker]

Well I made my annual trek to Wichita Falls Thursday and Checked into the Howard Johnson ex Remington, ex Holiday Inn, and paid a pretty good premium for the room. It was a pretty great hotel up to last year, but unless you are a fan of cold showers, I can't recommend it any more. So much for that minor disappointment.

I was pre registered for the show, so didn't have to wait in line to get into the biggest disappointment of the trip. The show had somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 the usual number of vendors as the previous shows, and as luck would have it some of the very guys I came to buy from didn't show up. Jerry Zonis had his Artisan crew there with a very large and complete working display of all his machines including the new proto type stuff.

First new item is a 25" throat version of the toro 4000. Very impressive machine if you have a need for that much throat clearance. It would be great for making fancy saddle blankets and pads for one thing.

Next item that caught my eye was the brand new motorized 24" splitter which is probably more like an effective 22". I put my order in for one when they are ready to ship.

Then there was the vaccuum equipped shoe finish machine with four stations. Really nice, but I still have an older smaller version that works great.

Lots of neat add on and up grade stuff for the older machines. I picked up a couple of very long neck high intensity lights for My 797AB and Toro 4000. It's hard to get too much light on the sewing area at my age so these little dudes will make my life much easier.

I picked up a new little basket weave stamp from Wayne Jueschke of Elko, Nevada. He makes some really nice quality tools in the $40 to $90 range that he makes out of L2 tool steel. His geometrics are hard to beat, particularly if you do any saddle stamping.

Barry king had another little stamp I thought I couldn't live without so it followed me home as well. His poly mauls are some of the nicest I've seen. Weaver Leather had their usual large and very complete working display area. Jeremiah Watt had his Horse Shoe brand tools for sale there as well. Douglas Saddle Co. had their usual huge display of pure vintage tools all cleaned up and ready to go for another 100 years. It's always fun to look around Douglas' table for a while. One very nice surprise was that I ran into 12 gallons (2 cases) of the old formula Barge cement so I loaded that up. Barge changed their formula sometime early in the year, very quietly, and in my opinion the new stuff is not even nearly as good as the old formula. This purchase should last me and my buddy quite a while.

All in all ther were just 61 vendors there and usually there are over 100. In fact, a couple of years ago there was more than 120. I guess this next year I'll plan on making theSheridan Show and maybe pass on Wichita Falls.

I managed to get everything I needed to do or could do and left the show about 2:00 PM and came on home. that's the first time I haven't spent at least a day and a half at the show. what there was, was great, but...................

Paul

Edited October 13, 2007 by sheathmaker

[bruce johnson]

Paul,

Thanks for the report. Posts like this kind of help the rest of us plan our travels out. I am probably going to go to Wichita Falls at some point, but this makes it a little less of a priority maybe.

You will like the sewing machine lights you bought. I have them on both machines, and they are nice. Long enough to be mounted out of the way, secure enough to stay where you aim them, and small enough to not be looking "around" them. My wife bought one for her station at work. Any ideas ideas on when the big splitter is going to be done? Are they still looking at around $2000?

I can only find one disagreement with your post. I can never find just one stamp I like with Barry King or Wayne Jueschke. I usually end up with a few. I like this one, my wife likes that one...

[sheathmaker]

Bruce, I would GUESS only that it will be about 6 months before the pipeline is full enough to deplete the waiting list on the splitter. I am at number 3 and it looks like R/D will take another month or so with in the field testing for blade integrity. The projected price stays a sub $2000 for now and will most probably remain so because of the anticipated volume of sales. Jerry has another cute little light in the pipe line. It's a six LED 'L" shaped light that mounts magnetically just above the needle and shines directly on the sewing area. It hsould sell for sub $10 when they arrive in the USA. I, of course, will HAVE to have a couple of those as well.

Regarding the tools, I have so darned many now (300+) that it's hard now not to duplicate the intended use use of the tool and I imagine you are in the same boat. That fact coupled with the other fact that I really only regulary use a small percentage of them, therefore selecting one or two is about all I can justify any more.

Paul

Edited October 13, 2007 by sheathmaker

[Go2Tex]

OK, now I can say, "been there, done that". And let me say this about that...... DO NOT EVER THINK ABOUT STAYING AT THE ECONO MOTEL. It is about as bad a dive as I have ever stayed at and I usually look for a bargain motel since all I need is a nice clean quiet bed and a shower. This place was none of those. The Motel 6 was like the Hilton by comparison.

Other than that, the show was nice. One thing I have to say though, the way it was set up in that Ag Center building made it hard to say the least. It's a BIG convention center building. You could probably have a rodeo in there. So, it was curtained off on one half or less of the room. The problem was, they chose to curtain off the side FURTHEST from the parking lot where all the vendors and competitors were parked. Now, this meant that everyone had to lug their saddles and goods a long damn way to and from. The real zinger was, they had these huge bay rollup doors they "could have" had opned for us to make the trip shorter. but NOOOO. They couldn't seem to figure out how to get somebody from the convention center operations staff to just be there to open those doors, which were locked! And to make insult to injury, there actually was a guy around there that could have done that but no, he didn't seem to understand the problem everyone was having.

And another thing, there was just about nuthin' to do all day Saturday except walk around, sit around, talk to vendors and try not to spend any more money. We had to be there at 9am on Friday and then stick around all day Saturday waiting for the results. There were no classes to take, no parties, no meet-and-greets, nuthin'. If you didn't already know everyone there, you were just left out of the loop.

And the beer cost $4 for a small Bud Light draft!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ....Now, I'm not complainin'..... OK, maybe just a little. But, come on, Bud Light? It's all they had!

Congrats to the winners, though. I learned a lot, since this was my first show. I'd give a full report of who done what, but I didn't have a list of the entries, just a looooooong list of the vendors and didn't write it all down. I do recall Don Butler won for best tooling in the open floral and Pedro Pedrini won Best in Show and workmanship. Paul Van Dyke won the open geometric class. If anyone has it different, please correct me. As for the bootmakers, I couldn't hear or see what was going on over there.

In summary, let me just say if you're thinking this little show down here in Texas is small potatoes, think again folks. The big guns came out and there was some absolutely stunning work there. You know when Troy West walks away empty handed, it was some mighty tuff competition. For me, it was an honor to have the opportunity to have my saddle sitting in the same room as those other guys.