Bob Marino said:
Rick,
Great story; thanks for sharing. The pics sparked my memory a bit. On the trip, we ha some fine German food and beer. And Rob Johnstone (in picture next to Christian O) and Steve Shaunnessy - from Woodworker's Journal and Popular Woodworking, along with dealers from Australia were there.
That's funny Bob. At first I couldn't tell if you were commenting on my picture or if you posted a picture that didn't come through (I suspect the latter) because Rob Johnstone was on both tours. However, instead of Aussie's joining us, it was the British media.
I didn't really take any group shots, but I cropped this one that I took of this really tall building, and our group was at the bottom of the shot. Left-to-right:
Rob Johnstone & wife (Woodworkers Journal), Randy Johnson (American Woodworker), Todd Riggio(?) (Woodshop News), Bob Hunter (Wood), Christian Oltzscher, Chris Schwarz (Popular Woodworking), Michael Williams (Festool), Mark Springer (Tools of the Trade).
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Here's another interesting story. I finally looked it up, and our tour was December of 2006. Later in the afternoon after seeing the factory, we all went into the Festool workshop to play with the
toys tools. As a "project", we each built one of the Festool Footstools. None of the editors had even heard of Domino before this trip, but I had already had one for the manual for about 6 months. So I quickly blasted through the footstool construction, and then walked around the shop to see if anyone needed some help. In the picture below, that's the footstool I slapped together, and I believe the guy in red is Vitus Rommel (far right), talking to my work partner.
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As I'm wandering about the workshop, Christian came up to me, and in a very quiet and serious voice, he said, "I'd like to talk to you." And I'm thinking, "OMG what have I done?" It quickly raced through my mind whether I could have upset anyone in the class by offering assistance.
When Christian brought me into a small storage closet and closed the door, I realized this was a lot more serious than that. Clearly I had done something terribly wrong, and I feared I was about to be asked to leave. I couldn't say a word because I was afraid my voice would crack, and reveal just how upset I was with the pending butt-chewing I was about to receive.
Christian prefaced his discussion with, "I couldn't talk to you in front of the others..." And I'm thinking, "&@%*&!, This is it. I've really upset him. I'm Done! I'm Gone!" It's about this time that I am taking stock of my environment, and realizing just how unusual this is. We're in a tiny storage closet with some steps to our right leading to the roof, and another door in front of us leading off to "who knows where." I figure that we're going through the other door so he can quietly escort me out of the building without making a scene in front of the rest of the group.
Christian started to say something else, but by this point I was too upset to even hear it. At the same time, he reaches for something under the stairs to our right...and I'm thinking, "what's going on.....?" And with that, he pulls back a shipping blanket and balls it up.
Oh my God, what's that....it looks like a black and green miter saw....Kapex!
All the fear, angst, and cloak 'n dagger was so he could show me the still top secret Kapex. The sudden relief from all the pent-up fear made me a little weak in the knees. "We've got some European prototypes being built now, and we'll be sending you one in a couple months." All I could murmur back was, "Oh."
It was still so secret that I wasn't allowed to even mention it to Festool employees. Christian and Michael were the only people I could talk to about it. Yup, it showed up on my doorstep a couple months later.
