Hi Folks,

   It's getting to be time to start planning your trip to the 3rd annual
Illinois Galootapalooza!  This year the Garfield Farm joint MWTCA and EAIA
meet takes place on Sunday morning August 2nd, so we will have our
gettogether the night before, Saturday the 1st, after pillaging the
Kane County flea market.  After confabulating with Ralph, Jerry, and
Russ, we decided that I could be entrusted with hosting the event
this year(my claim to fame is that I live really close to both the
above events so access is easy and driving minimal once you arrive
in the area).
      If you think that you can make it, please send me email and I will
add your name to the mailing list for updates on places to stay,
ideas for activities, times, maps, web pages, etc.  So far this year
we have decided to have a bench plane shootout for sure, so bring
your favorite infill smoother, bedrock, L-N, scraper, panel plane
or whatever, and we'll see if we can learn some tricks from each
other to help us all achieve hand plane nirvana.  I have some
fairly gnarly curly maple to try, but if you have some thing
particularly nasty, bring it along.  Geez, I am already starting to feel
insecure about how sharp my plane irons are...
        In addition, we will have some other demos that will depend
on the preferences of the folks come(several of us are already voting
for Mike Davies to make some sash), and of course what would life be
without show and tell.  Also hear rumors that Russ Allen might have
some new patterns- maybe we can get him to show us how to run a core
box plane.
        Anyway, if you think you can come, please drop me a line at:

mlindgre@c...

and we'll see if we can't have some fun!

Best regards, Mike Lindgren