Scottish Woodworking Show 2010

This year, instead of my trip to the woodworking show at Harrogate, I decided to go north of the border for a change, and visit the Scottish Woodcraft Show. It had been some time since the last Scottish show, so this one was billed as quite an event. It was held at the Royal Highland Showground, near Edinburgh Airport.

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There were about 24 stands in a very spacious hall which could have held twice as many. There was plenty of room to move about and see what was on offer. I stood by one stand, where there was a neat crescent-shaped rack of pens, above which was a notice proudly saying that each pen had been turned from a genuine wooden golf club. I said to the Scotsman standing next to me, "Well, I suppose they're all ball points then", but the comment was just met with a dour "Aye, may be" and he sloped off!

Most of the craft stands were manned by Scottish outfits; everything from stick making to shepherds crook making, pyrography, carving, furniture making, woodturning, pole lathe turning and rocking horse construction. The usual company stands included Ashley Isles, Robert Sorby, Record Power, Turners Retreat, Meantime Design and The Tool Shop. Many had special 'show offers' to tempt prospective buyers. On one interesting stand, there were a couple of guys from a Glasgow charity, the Bullwood Project, that had been set up to employ lads doing community service orders, to operate a sawmill and kiln to produce saleable timber from trees that had to be felled anyway and otherwise would have been burned. The Penrith branch of the AWGB had a good display of pieces, including a nice spinning wheel.

There were three demonstrators, with the star attraction being Stuart Mortimer. There was seating for around 100 in his area, and I watched him make it seem easy to turn a slender goblet with a tall, triple-twisted stem. There was a 'pile it high and sell it cheap' stall to browse around; the sort of place where you buy a set of nine twist drills and get home to find the middle three are the same size, or a steel rule that has the first 2mm missing, or a bundle of brushes whose bristles come away in the pot of diluted sanding sealer!

There was lots of space, and lots of time to talk to the craft people. I was impressed by how friendly they were and how willing to explain the subtleties of their branch of woodworking. One or two were surprised I'd made it up from Merseyside! I was rather disappointed however to not see any visitors wearing kilts, but in these days of over-zealous Health and Safety restrictions, that would have been expecting too much! Edinburgh is a lovely city, and I stayed overnight and rounded off my visit with a day's local sight-seeing

Phil Righton