the Rail Splitter Special is an awesome piece of art at the San Diego County Fair

vehicular art by the fine craftsmen in the San Diego Fine Woodworkers Association, amazing

There are all sorts of cool stuff at the fair. Avoid purchasing food there though, it's 4 to 5 times what you'll pay a mile away for the same thing in larger portion sizes and better taste. Example, a double double was 12.50 at the fair, it's less than 4.00 at In and Out

New use for cool license plates, Ukulele by Owen Burke

in the county fair wood working area

Scott Moran made a great model of the worlds biggest dump truck

"Some assembly required" Crawford High School auto shop project was to disassemble, then put it back together, to learn about modern cars

At the San Diego County Fair

Parking enforcement ran a red light, and got busted! Thanks Mika for the photo!

as I've said and posted before, the cops break the most laws

Amazing, Stephen Wright has duplicated the Studley tool chest in wood... that is an amazing tribute to a masterpiece

I came across this at the San Diego County Fair,... in the wood wood working display area, I had never even heard of before... wow, lots of great stuff there!
I posted the Studley tool chest a couple times before below: http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2008/07/look-at-tools-cause-without-them.html is it posted with a couple other incredible tool collections, but now I've just found the video posted below

In July 1988, the back cover of Fine Woodworking magazine featured an awe-inspiring unrivaled object: the vintage 19th-century tool chest of Massachusetts master carpenter piano maker Henry Studley built his magnificent tool chest over the course of a 30-year career at the Poole Piano Company.

For every tool, Studley fashioned a holder to keep it in place and to showcase it. Miniature wrenches, handmade saws, and some still unidentified piano-making tools each have intricate inlaid holders. Tiny clasps rotate out of the way so a tool can be removed. In places the clearances are so tight that the tools nearly touch.

The chest lived on the wall near his workbench, and he worked on it regularly, making changes and adding new tools as he acquired them. Using scraps from piano making ebony, mother-of-pearl, ivory, rosewood, and mahogany -- all materials used in the manufacture of pianos -- he refined the chest to the point that now, more than 80 years after his death, it remains in a class of its own.

the most incredible thing is that even though to se it open is amazing, you don't realize how much more is in store until you see on the video that what is on the surface are just racks, ans they hinge up to expose another layer below! See it on this video


Studley was well into his 80s when he retired from the piano company. Before he died in 1925, Studley gave the tool chest to a friend. That man's grandson, Peter Hardwick, loaned the chest to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. in the late 1980s and later sold it to a private collector