Did you build anything as a child?

[Chris Tsutsui]

I was a young kid (perhaps 8 or 9) and my dad bought me a wood kit to make a bird house. It came with some sheets of 1/4" soft wood, a 6" hack saw, wood glue, and pin nails + mini hammer. I built the project following the instructions and painted it to look exactly like the picture on the box.

My parents were proud of me and this experience ultimately made me more interested in building things.

So... bird house? Spice rack for mom? what else is good that's more advanced than gluing popsicle sticks together as a picture frame? Maybe something a kid can enjoy. Did you have a good experience for your first wood project?

My bird house ended up getting dirty and warped from being outside and I think my mom threw it away... I actually don't remember what happened to it, but I wish I still had it. :D

[Mike Cruz]

In Jr High, I remember making a key holder that you hang on the wall. It was in the form of the letters KEYS, with brass hooks. My mom had that hanging on the kitch wall for 25 years. If fell off the wall a million times. Got reglued every time. It finally gave up the ghost a few years ago when she moved...or maybe it got packed in a box...I don't know...

[Jim McFarland]

Absolutely! My Dad was a carpenter so only natural I wanted a toy tool set for, IIRC, my 6th birthday. In those days, the tools were actually useful and not the plastic things sold today. Still one of my all time favorite gifts! I don't recall the projects but will never forget the tools.

[Stephen Edwards]

One of my earliest and fondest memories is of being in my Daddy's "tool house". He was a non-motorized carpenter with a good selection of necessary tools for framing work and general construction.

I was allowed to use his tools at an early age, 6-7 years old. I can remember hanging out with him as he would be building a new chicken coop or brooder in front of the tool house. He would let me use the scraps to build whatever I wanted, which was mostly nailing boards together with a 13 oz Plumb hammer.

There were two rules. Don't use a tool for something it's not intended for (can't use a wrench for a hammer!) and put the tools back where they belong when you're finished with them. I'm still working on rule number two!

As I grew into my teens I began to enjoy woodworking more and more. For the life of me I can't understand why I didn't take a shop class in high school. I should have.

[Rod Sheridan]

Having a tradesman for a father warps your outlook on the world.

I was an adult long before I realized that the things I did for myself, other people paid tradesmen to do.

DUH! I guess I never thought about people who were my fathers customers!

I built bird houses, go carts, rabbit cages, table lamps etc from wood.

I bought two bicycles for $2 from the local police auction and made one good one out of it.

Later on in life I became interested in vintage motorcycles and presently ride a 33 year old BMW as basic transport during the riding season, as well as a 75 Norton and a 30 James.

Woodworking also became a hobby.

Regards, Rod.

[Art Mulder]

Having a tradesman for a father warps your outlook on the world.

This.

My dad was a finishing carpenter. One of the best things that I learned from him I didn't even realize I'd learned -- a willingness to give it a try. That's another way of saying self-confidence I guess.

And I also went to school in the 70s and actually got to go to shop class in 7th and 8th grade, so I learned some basic drafting, did some very elemental metal work, as well as turning and woodworking. In hindsight, very valuable.

...art

[Dan Gill]

I built a lot of stuff, including several tree houses and forts. In fact, some friends and I took our wagons about three miles across town to salvage lumber from a demolished house and dragged it all home.

I didn't take shop because it conflicted with Band, and it was a great place to get your head bashed in at my schools. Perhaps because of that I didn't really take up woodworking until I was about 40.

[Jacob Mac]

No. My dad is a minister, so we didn't build much. We had to repair everything because we didn't have any money. But building stuff never really happened.

I chanced into this hobby after doing a lot of home improvement projects.

[Jim Rimmer]

I spent a lot of time with my Grandfather as a kid. He was a rancher and did carpenter work to survive. I went on jobs with him from my earliest memory. He would send me to the pick-up to get tools for him and I learned at an early age how to tell a hand rip saw from a crosscut, how to read the sizes on auger bits (which was a great help with fractions later on)and how to identify just about every tool a carpenter used. At a pretty early age I was hammering and sawing right beside him and learned a lot from him.

I still remember his favorite saying when he would see me choke up on a hammer and peck at a nail with it: "Boy, grab the handle by the end and swing it. You're gonna wear that hammer out the way your peckin' with it." :D

[Jim Finn]

I started building things at about age eight. Wood and tissue flying model airplanes. I had already done some carving. We carved with a butter knife and a bar of soap. I later made many wooden boats and coasting carts. My dad owned a sheet metal shop so I also made a lot of things for him in his shop. I worked construction my whole life so I have been building stuff a long tome. Started into "wood working" as an adult, first making ,wood and leather, carved, fireplace bellows.

[Keith Christopher]

Yep ! and I'm making it into something better now that I'm more skilled. :) Well hopefully more skilled. :eek:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=117989

[Alex Leslie]

My Dad, an accountant, started me woodworking when I was very young, maybe 4 or 5. I first built boats out of blocks of scrap wood to float in the gutter after a rain or in a nearby stream. He made me a small workbench with a fixed dog to saw against (all hand tools).

I later built go-karts with old baby carriage wheels to run down the hill on. My best friend and I built about a 1/4 scale model of the wright flyer for a cub scout project when we were 10. It was pretty crude but everyone knew what it was. My neighborhood pals & I built several treehouses from lumber begged off nearby construction sites.

About that time, I helped my Dad build modular doll houses for my sisters patterned after the ones from Creative Playthings - no plans, just a picture in the catalog. I also built a stepstool for my Grandmother so she could hang her laundry. My Mom gave it back to me after Grandma died 22 years ago. I still have it.

50 years later, I have more power tools than my Dad ever dreamed of having, capable of doing things that he did with a handsaw, brace & bits, square, Yankee screwdriver, hammer and chisels. My family still has many of the things he made, which are as functional now as they were in the 50's & 60's.

I don't make a living at it, but I probably could. :cool:

[Paul Ryan]

My father is very very unmechanical if that is a word, so NO we never did. I got all of my abilities from my mothers side. Her father was a mechanic small engines mainly (he died in 82 so I never leaned much from him). Both of her brothers are or were machinists. My mother was the one to fix the few things around the house if necessary. My father couldn't fix a cup of coffee. However he taught me other things I couldn't have learned myself. I never went to school for mechanics, actually got a social studies degree from a university. Became a master mechanic on my own from time and experience, I am learning wood working on my own, and with the help of the creek of course. But I did build a cribbage board when I was about 10, and made a bird house is boy scouts.

[Danny Thompson]

When I was in 4th or 5th grade, my older brother and I constructed a 2-story enclosed fort (no trees in my neighborhood) out of 2x4's and 4x8 plywood. My recollection is that the majority of the cutting was done with a Craftsman hand saw, but I'm pretty sure dad gave us construction advice and whipped out the circular saw on the larger panes. The rest was hammer and nails.

We had a blast.

Oh, and one concussion later I had learned a valuable lesson: Never hang wall boards on a windy day.

[Mark Elmer]

Hi all, You bet. My first workbench was the windowsill of my bedroom when I was five years old. Christmas always netted me some new tools and if I'm lucky it still does. At the age of ten a friend and I built a "hut" on the side of my house. It had running cold water and a wood stove. My Mom and Dad usually knew where to find me.

[John Crum]

Great thread, folks, Great to reminisce. I guess I have always been building something ever since I can remember. Model airplanes till the teens. Dad was an upholsterer by trade so I had a shop available to me. I guess the project I remember most was a soap box racing car. Won a couple of heats the first year. Second year my dad made me build a car for my younger brother. I protested that it wasn't fair to build my competition, but Dad insisted, and so I did it. Heck, I even built my brothers car better than mine. My brother still kids me about it, and we both have a great laugh. Fortunately, we didn't wind up being paired against each other. That was over 60 years ago. Time does seem to fly.

[sean m. titmas]

When i was 6 my Dad brought home some scraps of 1x6, plywood and a broken shovel handle from the job site and we made a small carpenters tool box to carry my hammer, tape and the rest of my tools. Than a few months later he shower me how to build a 7/24 saw horse. After I learned how to cut wood with the hand saw and start nails without splitting the wood i started to build things with the wood that my Dad brought home from the job. I built a club house for my sister and her friends and a lemonade stand for my best friend who lived down the street. I could care less about selling juice but i was so into building things that i even drew up plans for the stuff i made. Since my Dad was a carpenter and builder it just made sense to me to follow in his footsteps.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Reading all of you guy's memories really brings back the "good old days"! Well, at least less stressful ones anyhow.

When I was a kid, I was facinated by the mechanics of military rifles. When I was ten or so, Dad gave me a coping saw, which I used to cut out my first toy rifle. That Christmas, Mom and Dad bought me a Black and Decker jig saw. I taught myself how to draw something to scale from photos and known dimensions soon after, and started making some pretty decent wooden rifles. Actually had a backlog of neighbor kids wanting various models. It was a hoot, and I really learned a lot by doing it. Still have a couple pine M-16's around here someplace...

[John Loftis]

My dad owned a hammer and some nails. That was about the limit. I remember hammering a bunch of nails, though. :) Since I couldn't 'create' in a woodshop, I spent a lot of time making models and forts. Didn't get to make anything 'real' out of wood until my freshman year in high school, when I made mom a cherry carving board in the shape of a pig. She still has it. Second project was a skateboard, which led to my first concussion.

I think I've been hard-wired since childhood with a need to create. I suspect most SMC'ers are too. Not sure whether that's 'normal' or not.

[Denny Rice]

I was first introduced to woodworking in the 7th grade. Back then, even 7th graders were allowed to use power tools in the shop (table saw, jointer, ect.) My first project was a book rack, I had to take metal shop in the 8th grade but in the 9-12 grade I took wood shop every year. My senior yr I built an TV entertainment center for my parents home. Twenty plus years later it still looks new and still sits in their living room. After I graduated I helped disabled kids learn basic woodworking with my shop teacher, I did it with him for two years until the school system shut down the summer program. After that I still did not have the money for my own shop, but my old high school would have night school classes and you could take wood shop. I did it for 5 yrs until I started to build my own shop and have never lost the love of woodworking. It saddens me to see more and more schools closing wood shops up for various reasons.

[J. Greg Jones]

My grandfather was a finish carpenter, as was his father before him. Back in their days, a finish carpenter's work more closely resembled woodworking than what a finish carpenter's (if there is such a thing) work would be today. We lived with my grandparents when I was a young child, and I loved spending time in the shop watching and helping my grandfather, as he also did some woodworking as a hobby.

When I was about 4-5, we built a boat together one afternoon using scraps from the shop. I was so happy with that boat and 50 years later I still have it, along with my grandfather's and great-grandfather's planes, chisels, and saws. My grandfather has long since passed on, but his love of working wood is still with me today. Last year I built a boat, a Noah's Ark, for my first grandson who turns 1 today. I hope he will cherish the ark, and the times to come with his grandfather, as much as I loved spending time with mine. Here is my old boat pictured alongside the ark.

http://homepage.mac.com/jgregjones/.Pictures/Shop/Projects/Ark05.jpg

[mike holden]

When I was about 9, I made a pipe rack for my grandfather. Used the lathe at the Boy's Club and was given some dark mystery wood to make it out of.
He lived several states away, and was thrilled to find that he had not only used it, but placed it in his front room! To put this in perspective, he was a fine cabinetmaker by trade, so to put a childs work into his living room where guests could see it, that was high praise.
Mike

[Steve Southwood]

I didn't really build anything at first. I did drive a bunch of nails. For one of my early birthdays, my step-dad gave me a hammer and a 1lb bag of 8 penny nails. Up until this time I always used his "Good stuff" in the garage. Well I guess the boredom got the best of me, as when he came home from work one afternoon, there I was, up on the garage roof. I drove everyone of those nails in to the roof. Pretty sure there was a beating involved with that one.

Strange thing is, we were talking about this just yesterday.

Many smashed fingers later, I still love to do carpenter work and build stuff.

[Zach England]

Pinewood derby, anyone?

[David G Baker]

My first wood working project took place when I was around 7. I had access to an electric drill that had a sand paper holding disk on it and I used it to make a small sculpture of a human foot. Turned out pretty good.

[Ben Davis]

I made a "tool box" when I was in Boy Scouts... might have even been Cub Scouts. It was great. Open handled type, just like Saint Roy uses, but smaller. I got to sand it and stain it. Still at my old man's house!

[Larry Browning]

I remember making most of my really "cool" toys with my dad. He worked in aviation as a builder, so he was forever bringing home scrap and other "junk" that had been discarded. He worked a lot with fiberglass too. We made scooters, wagons, go carts, tree houses, and probably stuff I can't even remember. I think he had more fun doing that stuff than I did! In looking back on that, I learned more about problem solving and creativity than could ever be taught in any school. Those days out in the garage with dad are some of my most cherished. My brother had very little interest in building or making things, as a result I think I was always closer to dad then he ever was.

[Dewald van Lamp]

These are great memories...

Thank you for sharing it!

For a moment there, I saw myself trying something impossible in wood with an old BLUNT woodie...

I believe that it belonged to my great-grandfather who founded our family here in South Africa. He died on 20 January 1899, and I was priviledged to place a wreath on his grave on 20 January 1999, ecxactly 100 years after he departed this world...

"KOFF..! KOFF..!"

How do you spell "exatcly..?"

;)