NJBA participated in the 2004 Monmouth County Fair by providing demonstrations to the public. Unfortunately, I, David had to travel to California on business the week of the fair so I was not able to provide much organization to setup; however, Bruce Freeman did a great job pinch hitting. Our only snafu was not getting the key for the tool cabinets to the folks that wanted to demonstrate Wednesday through Friday. We will work to rectify that in the future. The weather apparently was not very good for the first 3 days, but it improved steadily for the weekend.

This year we modified the fly with a self standing skeleton of ¾” and 1” pipe. Tom Eden sold NJBA the fittings and bungee cords. Josh Kavett donated the ¾” pipes and we reused the telescoping 1” pipes from our existing setup. The self-standing fly was secures with 4 ropes ate the corner. The resulting system is stronger is much stronger and weather resistant than our previous system of poles, ridges, ropes and stakes. The fly is up higher and provides more room on the edges to move in and out of the fly.

Demonstrations were provided on Saturday by Grant Clark, David Macauley and Tom Majewski. Grant worked on a few horse shoes – always a favorite. He also accepted a challenge to make a horse out of steel which came out quite nicely. David Macauley and Marshall Bienstock provided demonstrations on Sunday. As usual, David worked on making tongs, but I also did a coat hook with ball ends. I made the ball ends by welding metal around ½” square stock.
Many thanks to all those who helped with assembly and tear down of the site. Not sure who helped with the setup but I know the tear down was done by Marshall Bienstock, Tom Eden and Tom Majewski. We quickly realized that we need a system for carrying the 8 ft long poles for the fly – they will not fit inside the trailer. Any ideas for attaching the poles to the trailer would be welcomed.

The fair again spurred some ideas for additional equipment for the NJBA trailer:
1. We really need a folding table to display our work.
2. Another vice stand: This year we borrowed Bruce’s vice stand that was fabricated last year at the vice stand workshop. We could really use a vice stand with four detachable legs capable of supporting two vices at either ends of the stand.
3. First Aid kit
4. Rivets 3/16”, 1/4” , 1/2”
5. New roofing for the trailer – the plywood is wearing quickly. We probably need sheet metal of some other protective surface. In fact the entire trailer could use a coat of paint
Lessons learned:
1. The white PVC tubes are great for the stanchions, but are too heavy for storing the stock. We have started storing the stock on the floor of the trailer
2. I think we need a different hood system – something that would block the wind and draw more of the smoke up the chimney – he did note that the wind blows predominantly from the east across the fields.