New to the Forum

[Edward Mitton]

Hi, All,
I've been lurking on this forum for awhile and finally joined.

I will likely be hanging around the Neanderthal area as that is the direction my woodworking activities have been going ever since I recently acquired my grandfather's boxes of woodworking and mechanics tools.

A little about me: Resident of Castle Rock, Colorado; Married 34 years to a lovely South Korean lady; three girls, all grown, 2 grand-twerps. I work for Echostar as a supervisor of engineering technicians.

Besides woodworking, I have a lot of other interests: Play electric violin, guitar, and mandolin, play in church orchestra /praise rock band, perform some local gigs, open mics, etc. Even do a little busking ever so often; Philately (stamp collecting); Numismatics (coin collecting); Civil War enthusiast; Dabble in cartoon drawing; oh, and gardening/landscaping around my home. So, as you might expect, I keep myself pretty dern busy.
I look forward to chatting with you folks and learning from your collective knowledge/wisdom. Maybe I can even add some of my own miniscule knowledge to the forum!

[Jim Koepke]

Edward,

Welcome to the Creek. Reading you are located in Castle Rock had me excited until I got to Colorado. Castle Rock, Washington is just up the road from me. You might want to include that in your profile. In a few weeks or so people will l likely forget.

There is a member on the forum from Castle Rock, WA.

What kind of woodworking projects are you interested in?

Folks always like to see pictures of tools, shops and projects.

I used to enjoy coin collecting, but it got to be pretty expensive to upgrade or find something different.

Also do a bit of gardening.

jtk

[Archie England]

Welcome, indeed!

[Bruce Page]

Welcome! Pull up a chair!

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Welcome to the creek....

electric violin? I have heard of dropping in a pickup, but not an electric violin. I suppose I should not be surprised.

So, what are your woodworking interests?

[Bobby O'Neal]

Welcome!!!

[Edward Mitton]

I'll keep this one short since it's off topic....

Most electric violins on the market these days are solid body with a peizo pickup under the bridge. Many are 5 string, taking them down to viola range with the added C string.

Cool thing with electrics is one can run them through the standard guitar effects chain and come up with some amazing sounds. Check out the music of Jean-Luc Ponty (EV pioneer).

[David Weaver]

Play electric violin, guitar, and mandolin,

A regular Mark O'Connor huh?

[Edward Mitton]

I enjoy most of woodworking, and will build whatever is of interest. In the past I was big into pyrography, so I built a bunch of clocks with wood-burned wildlife pix. Basically your standard pine board with a mitered frame and a quartz movement poked through a hole, but adorned with a detailed picture. Sold lots of 'em.
My biggest project was completed this past January - A fire station bunkbed / playhouse for the grand kids. It was built from a set of plans my daughter gave me. I think the plans came from Pottery Barn or something similar. The construction in the plans called for a lot of pocket-hole joinery, but I used dowel joinery instead. With over 60 upper railing pieces, that was a lot of production-line cutting and drilling with a dowelling jig. The finish painting was the most time-consuming part of this project, as I chose to hand-paint simulated red-brick walls! I will post some pix if I can find them.
My last completed project was a planter for the backyard patio made entirely out of Trex cutoffs from a deck expansion I did last summer. Not exactly woodworking, but the tools and processes were the same.
I am currently working on a wooden stand for my full length lathe. It's my first all-Neander project, being built for a 'tailed' appliance (gasp!!).
My wife is big into turning and has already produced a number of very nice vases out of Aspen logs. My only involvement in this is keeping her turning tools sharp, chucking up the blanks, and doing the initial rough-cylinder gouging...essentially the grunt work. She gets to do all the cool artistic stuff ! I'm really pleased that she has taken an interest.
After the lathe stand, my next project will be a wall mount tool cabinet. I have the classic photo of the Studley cabinet as the screen-saver on my workplace computer. I cannot hope to even come close to anything like that, but it's very inspirational.
In February, I inherited my grandfather's tool kits. Not only was he a woodworker, but he had owned a car repair shop/filling station back in the day. During WWI he had been in the Army as an airplane mechanic working stateside. I can imagine all the vintage bi-wing war planes he must have worked on!
Anyway, he had quite a few old woodworking tools that I have been refurbishing and putting back into use. This has led me straight down the path of 'Neanderthal / Galootism'. I have been learning how to sharpen and hone edge tools, and working on hand tool techniques. I am abandoning tailed woodworking tools more and more in favor of the 'Armstrong' variety. I have also been eating up everything I can find by and about Schwartz, Sellers, Underhill, and others. I have pored through my huge collection of woodworking magazines seeking out all the hand-tool articles and tutorials I can find. Norm and the WoodSmith shop TV series that I loved so much are starting to fade into the haze.

I have even gone as far as designating a portion of my garage shop as a "No Electric Power or Cheap-Plastic-Handled Tools Allowed" zone. It's somehow very satisfying being surrounded by things constructed out of only steel, wood, and stone, and learning how to use them in a quiet, dust-free manner. Might start to worry if I take to wearing St. Roy-type suspenders! The LOML will likely also worry. Anyway, I will probably be hanging around this part of the SC forum for awhile with lots of qustions.

[Edward Mitton]

Kinda....But I would have to have one of those amplifiers that has a knob where I can turn up the TALENT to reach his level!

[Gary Muto]

Hi Ed,

I've been a member here for a while but I'm relatively new to CO. I just moved from MI to Colorado Springs in March . I see that there are at least of few of us here above 5000 feet. ;)

[Edward Mitton]

Welcome to the Centennial state!.. Yep, I've lived here 57 years (most of that in Colorado Springs). Never had a desire to move anywhere else!

[Edward Mitton]

Another bonus about Colorado..since it's in a semi-arid zone, we don't have the problem of high humidity invading our workshops and rusting our tools, so its' OK to have them out on racks and shelves.

[Jim Matthews]

Kinda....But I would have to have one of those amplifiers that has a knob where I can turn up the TALENT to reach his level!

Just get the one that goes to eleven.
It works for Nigel (Tufnel, not Kennedy).

[Edward Mitton]

...and I must remember to not stand too closely to those spontaneously-combusting percussionists!

[Richard Gonzalez]

Welcome - I'm a little east of you in Elizabeth. I've got quite a few other woodworking friends in the area as well that I met through the local woodworking guild. Would be happy to get to meet you sometime! I've been collecting neanderthal tools for a while at local garage sales (there's and old pattern maker in Castle Rock that has a pretty good garage sale every spring) but haven't yet built any hand tool only projects.

[Edward Mitton]

I know that old pattern-maker very well. I always stop and chat with him for a good while when I'm at one of his yard sales. He just did one last weekend. I picked up a Disston D-8 for a buck, a Goodell -Pratt eggbeater, and a few other assorted small antique tools. I 'm always one of the first ones there whenever I see those green signs goin' up on the street corners! Actually, I live only a few blocks from him, so his twice a year yard sales are always a much-looked-forward-to event. Even though he has a lot of nice tools at his sales, he told me he has taken to putting up some of his better stuff on e-Bay. The reason for this would surprise you. He says that most folks that visit his sales don't know a lot about the vintage tools, and he sometimes has difficulty moving them! A number of the guys that show up are mainly looking for things like socket sets, tool boxes, and the more main-stream common stuff. This is great for guys like you and me, who can walk in and find things like a box of old wood marking guages for a couple bucks each to look through, and our eyes light up. Incidently, I picked up just such a guage at his place a couple seasons back - a Stanley SW that looked barely used. He tells me he does a quick cleaning on most tools that he has out on his tables, but occasionally, he'll have a box that he recently acquired, hasn't had time to look through, and sets it out for 25 cents per tool. It was in such a box last week that I found a nice 4-way rasp that a little dip in the vinegar will turn into a very usable item.
I've been through Elizabeth quite a number of times. Nice little town. I have a friend that lives farther out at the next stop east of you.