Best In The West

Last weekend a woodworking buddy and I headed off to the Best In The West - Tool Extravaganza. This is a tool collectors gathering hosted by the Pacific Northwest Tool Collectors (PNTC). The event only happens every other year and moves between Washington and Oregon. It’s a 4-day event but we only went on Saturday, for the main tool sale and auction. Even though I don’t consider myself a collector, it was a lot fun.

I went there looking for some good user tools, but ended up walking away without buying anything. For me I was quite overwhelmed and really couldn’t make up my mind. I really haven’t done much research on older tools, so I really wasn’t sure what I was looking at. I could tell the different between the user tools and the collectable tools. The collectable tools were always in the hundreds and thousands of dollars range! I went looking for hammers, saws and eggbeater style hand drills, but for some reason those were in short supply. Maybe those aren’t as collectable as other tools.

I always knew woodworkers and now tool collectors are some of the nicest people. The people at this event lived up to this reputation. Everyone was very nice and answered all the questions of a couple newbies.

The other part of the event was the tool collection displays. This is worth the trip even if you don’t buy anything. These collections were amazing, I should have spent more time over there. I snapped a few pictures, but the pictures really don’t do them justice. If you ever have a chance to go to an event like this, I highly recommend it.

At the end of the day, there was a dinner and live auction. At part of the dinner you had a choice to purchase a “favor”. The favor cost $50 but was well worth it. For each event PNTC commissions a one of a kind tool to be made. When we signed up we saw some of the past favors, and they were incredible. So, we said we were going to get this year’s favor.

While walking around we found a toolmaker named Christopher Laarman. He makes these amazing Finger Planes. While talking to him, we found out he was the guy who made this years favor. What the favor is going to be, is always a big secret. There was no way he was going to tell us what he made. We both joked how cool it would be if we got one of those Finger Planes! We both knew it was out of the question, because some of his planes were going for over $300. Wow, were we surprised when we opened the favor! It was one of his planes. It wasn’t quite as refined as some of his other planes, but it is a beautiful example of craftsmanship.

As I stated before, I’m not a collector. I can get excited about seeing a MIB old plane that has never been used or hardly touched. At the same time, I’m a little sad that the tool never gotten to live out it’s potential as a tool. So, that means my little Finger Plane will be taken out of its box and tuned up and put to use! It’s a good thing those tools in their pristine original boxes are so expensive, otherwise I might let some of them free ☺!