Wendell Castle was the Keynote Speaker at this year’s annual Furniture Society conference in Philadelphia held at The University of the Arts, where I was honored to be a presenter.

He discussed his thoughts on design, inspiration and the role of technology in woodworking. He inspired and blew everyone away.

This year’s conference was heavy on technology and rightfully so. We can’t ignore it, as it is another tool that is now becoming affordable and accessible. My presentation, Technology and the Human Hand: Are We Losing Touch?, was an extended version of a TEDx talk and paper I submitted to past FWW editor Asa Christiana and posted here. My presentation had a lively discussion afterwards, which was the purposed of my speech: get people to talk.

Wendell attended my talk and provided some useful insight on his use of a carving robot in his process. You can visit here to take a brief tour of his amazing shop, awesome and unbelievable pieces of equipment, and to see the robot in action.  

Join in the fun and take a favorite tool survey and enter to win a sign Wendell Castle poster. 

I encourage any serious woodworker to consider joining the Furniture Society and/or attending one of their conferences. Getting out of the shop (which I don’t do much), it can be very invigorating! It spawned many new ideas that I now can have a robot make for me. (OK that was a joke folks – I couldn’t resist.)

Enjoy! 

Launch Gallery