My Joiner’s Bench and a picture take inside my shop in southern France
I can do and make bunches of stuff: Everything from joinery to electronics, rough framing to leather work, sewing to crown molding, wood turning to machining, from bookbinding and letterpress to electrical, figure carving to heavy machine operation, throwing pots to painting houses, forging/blacksmithing to welding and metal fabrication. I am a rocket engineer at my day J-O-B so I have 20+ years of 2D&3D CAD design and I am a huge 3D printing, laser, and CNC machining nerd. I wear overalls a LOT, I am a pretty fine shade tree mechanic, and a decent small boat builder. I don’t plumb really well though. I say dirty, vile words every time I try to fix an old galvanized pipe or have to sweat lead into a flange.
In addition to being the son and grandson of builders and tradesmen, I am also a child of both Norm Abram and Roy Underhill. I watched them both on PBS every Saturday after cartoons as a small child starting in something like 1981. Their combined influence has made me value the old way of doing things without being a Luddite and I can appreciate modern cabinet shop/woodworking tools. Case in point: I have a 3HP Powermatic 3520 lathe and would not even want to think about turning a bowl or platter on a pole lathe with a forged hook knife. On the other hand, while I have not given up a single one of my 5 routers, I found years ago that it is sometimes faster to grab an old wooden molding plane from a shelf and take care of an edge detail on piece of trim. I can be done and dusted with the plane in the time it would take me to find the right bit an set up the router.
I can do and make bunches of stuff: Everything from joinery to electronics, rough framing to leather work, sewing to crown molding, wood turning to machining, from bookbinding and letterpress to electrical, figure carving to heavy machine operation, throwing pots to painting houses, forging/blacksmithing to welding and metal fabrication. I am a rocket engineer at my day J-O-B so I have 20+ year of 2D&3D CAD design and I am a huge 3D printing and CNC machining nerd. I am a pretty fine shade tree mechanic and an decent small boat builder. I don’t plumb really well though. I say dirty, vile words every time I try to fix an old galvanized pipe or have to sweat lead into a flange.
In addition to being the son and grandson of builders and tradesmen, I am also a child of both Norm Abram and Roy Underhill. I watched them both on PBS every Saturday after cartoons as a small child starting in something like 1981. Their combined influence has made me value the old way of doing things without being a Luddite and I can appreciate modern cabinet shop/woodworking tools. Case in point: I have a 3HP Powermatic 3520 lathe and would not even want to think about turning a bowl or platter on a pole lathe with a forged hook knife. On the other hand, while I have not given up a single one of my 5 routers, I found years ago that it is sometimes faster to grab an old wooden molding plane from a shelf and take care of an edge detail or piece of trim. I can be done and dusted with the plane in the time it would take me to find the right bit an set up the router.
I have a a full cabinet/boat shop, a small machine shop, an automotive garage with car lift, and a blacksmith forge in my 670 sq. ft. detached garage in a tiny quiet Seattle neighborhood. My cute, though long suffering, wife recently let me build an underground lair/mad scientist lab in 144 sq. ft. of reclaimed basement space as well.
Our home is a 1928 Craftsman Bungalow that we have torn to the studs and rebuilt piece by piece over a three year period and our small yard is full of fruit trees, flowers, a very large and productive garden, a couple of bee hives, and two French bulldogs running amok.