Best finds from Makers Central NEC Show 2024

With a monster haul of show goodies, it's hard to summarise the best finds from our Makers Central NEC trip this year, but we've given it a go.  Whatever your craft, trade, passion or interest, most areas were represented this year.  Smiles seemed permanently glued to faces, and the atmosphere was electric, but here's just some of our highlights.

About Makers Central

The Makers Central NEC show is an annual, fun family event for creators, makers and hobbyists.  You can meet world-famous makers and YouTube stars, explore crazy inventions and interactive displays. It's a pretty unique event in this space since both kids and grown ups can be entertained whilst learning new skills.  

The People

It goes without saying that it's the people who really make an event like this. So in any list of best take-aways from a show, the people we met have to come top. And seeing the queues of people wanting to meet their favourite Youtube stars like Colin Furze and The Hacksmith, it seems most people feel the same.

Regular followers of our channel will already have enjoyed some of the projects we've done with Colin. So for sure Jonathan spent some time with him hatching new plans!  Nice too to catch up with Colin's right-hand man Tom Lamb who was in his usual great form. Particularly fantastic too to catch up with our buddy The Hacksmith as he made the journey from Canada as we hadn't seen him since he last came to visit us about a year ago.

But between other Shadow Foam Ambassadors, Affiliates and Youtube creators, the Makers Central NEC experience was choc-full of inspiration. We'd planned for this weekend to be our biggest event yet, and it certainly turned out that way. 

Brands at Makers Central NEC 2022

We started our exploration with the wonderful Xtreme Plasma.  We already had one of their Deburrer's but they introduced  us to the newer iteration of the product along with an incredible ceramic knife used in refining 3D printing.  

Jonathan was really impressed by the inventor of the G-Sharp chisel sharpener and has been using that in the workshop since the show to great effect.  

Gyrocut was a totally new brand for us, but we loved the versatility of the product and can see a wealth of potential applications for it, so of course made a purchase to try for ourselves.  

We were super lucky to get to spend a little time with the Brokeswood Builds team.  Their products were incredible, exceptionally well made and this was reflected in how busy their stand was all weekend.  

Shadow Foam representation at the show

We are getting accustomed to seeing our product well represented at shows like the Makers Central NEC show, but never more so than this year.  

Of course, friend of the channel Colin had our product on the massive Furze stand.  Also we were thrilled to be positioned next door to UK based woodworking tool giants LumberJack tools who had their Shadow Foam Power Tool Wall in pride of place on the booth.  

Friend and Shadow Foam Ambassador Ruth Amos was at the show but this year in a different guise promoting her book The Inventor's Workshop - with stunning illustrations, we obviously snaffled a few copies for future giveaways and competitions.  

Plus it was a total surprise to find our products being used to store and transport some incredible items on the Vintage Tools booth.  Of course we made some purchases while there too!

More from Makers Central NEC 

We were thrilled to host the inimitable duo Brothers Make on our booth.  The connection with these guys was originally made when we did some workshop storage for them, but has since expanded in an exciting way.  They now create our foam smoothing spinner product from us using re-cycled material, so it was great to spend time with Matt and Jonny over the weekend.

We had some great demo's and chats too with lots of other exhibitors.  Famag Forstner and Thorn Wood Forge to name just a couple.  But if you'd like to check out the full inside skinny from this year's show and details of all the brilliant finds we made, check this out: