April 3, 2008

JLC Live - Rhode Island 2008

Last Friday we locked up the shop and headed out to the JLC Live show in Rhode Island. It's always a good time and it gives us a chance to put our hands on some new tools, see what new building products are out there, and to bump into some old friends.

There's no doubt that this year's event was dominated by the Festool Kapex. Everyone was talking about it and there were a few on display. Festool, once a small booth way over in the corner, is now a major sponsor and had some prime real estate in the direct center of the conference hall. Anyway, the Kapex, is indeed a very nice tool, but $1300...

Another thing we saw that we really liked was Pioneer's Mini Palm Nailer. For $45 you could get this very small, very powerful, all-purpose nailer. They were sold out by the time we got there (2 hours into the first day), if that gives you any indication on how popular they were.

For the most part, it was a pretty average show, with very little different from last year. It seemed light on tools and heavy on composite building materials and Bosch didn't even have their silly tool dropping station set up.