Origin Stories

[kenneth hatch]

My woodworking started in the early/mid '70. I acquired my first house in Houston, TX and started to sign over my paycheck to another kinda new company, Home Depot. At the time HD carried a good supply of power tools including Delta. While there, lusting over a Delta floor model drill press (which I still have) I saw a new magazine "Fine Woodworking", between that and the "Garrett Wade" catalog I was in lust city. I still have most of the tools from Garrett Wade including a couple of Record planes and Freud chisels.

Tools from Garrett Wade:

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At the time I also lusted after a workbench but I was a charter pilot, in a time of too many pilots (unlike today) and there was no money to buy a bench even if I could have found one to buy. The only answer was to build one. A slight digression I don't know how many of you have seen Russian airplanes up close and personal but, all I can say is they are a hoot. The Russians have their copy of a 727, Falcon 50, and so on all made to operate from Russian Airports. Russian runways are made of concrete slabs floating on permafrost. they can and will take the landing gear off the aircraft in a heartbeat except most Russian aircraft have what look like tractor tires on their landing gear. Then the other thing is the designer got a good look at a Falcon 50 before he started drawing up his version but the vodka bottle got in the way before he finished. If you squint you can kinda see the Falcon 50 bones, kinda.

Sorry for the digression but it does deal with my first bench. I had never seen a real woodworking workbench only a few photos in "Fine Woodworking" and the "Garrett Wade" catalog. With those photos in mind I gathered up some SYP from HD and a couple of Pyramid metal vises and went to work.

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That's it, minus the vises. Still ugly as granny drawers but it functioned as a workbench for a number of years up until I stopped flying the line and was able to set up my curent shop. In fact I built my first Roubo bench on that sucker. MsBubba uses it to cook on in the back garden and I expect it will still be in use when I croak.

ken

[kenneth hatch]

I forgot to add: I'd love to read your origin stories. How did you start, do you still have some of your first tools?

ken

[Derek Cohen]

I wrote this on my website in 2010:


Bob’s Stanley #3


http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Commentary/BobsStanley3_html_m24494092.jpg

I have a special fondness for the Stanley #3 handplane. I inherited my father-in-law's English-made #3 at a time when I was still solidly into powertools, and so it disappeared into the back of a shelf. About 15 years ago (circa 1995), having built a new house, I was deep into attaching doors and using a noisy, messy, powered Makita plane to trim the edges, suffocating under the usual earmuffs and eye protection needed for this tool. At some stage the blades on the Makita became too blunt to use and, being a weekend, the store that stocked replacements was closed. Then I recalled the little #3 at the back of the shelf. I'd never used one before, and only had a general idea what to do with it. Indeed, my FIL had passed on several years before the #3 came to live with me, and so the blade had not been sharpened for a couple of decades.

I must have done something right, or Bob was smiling down and had a hand in it, but the moment I place the sole on the edge of the door and pushed forward, I got this "schhhhiiiiiiikkkkkk", and a long ribbon of wood appeared in the silence of the workshop, getting longer and longer as I pushed the plane forward. There is no way to forget that moment - I was hooked!

The #3 is small and intimate. I just loved using this plane.

Now here's the embarrassing part. My confession is that I am a compulsive modifier, and have been ever since I could walk (so my parents tell me). I read about tuning planes. One of the tips was to file a chamfer inside the mouth to aid the flow of shavings. But I clearly misunderstood the directive ... and filed the outside of the sole .. effectively opening the mouth! I didn't recognise what I had done for a few years (as I only really used the plane on softwoods), until I became educated by Badger Pond. And then I felt awful! How could I have done this to Bob's plane?!

I never told anyone in the family. I very much doubt that they would have understood the issue anyway. Years went by with the #3 on the shelf again. Every now-and-then I searched eBay for another plane as a donor. Finally I found one that was identical to Bob's. I was not interested in a better #3. I just wanted the same English casting, one in the same condition - but the #3 is not easy to find ... Onto the "new" base I placed Bob's frog, blade, knob and tote. I sharpened the England-made blade for the first time in many years and ran it over a piece of Karri Pine. It went "Schhhhhhiiiiikkkkk".

The jazz on the shop stereo never sounded sweeter.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Stew Denton]

Ken,

When I was a kid, my dad had a small shop and a few woodworking tools. My much older brother had been give a small tool set by an aunt and uncle as a child, and it had a very small, but also very real hand saw. I can't remember what I used it for, but liked to saw with it. About the time I was perhaps about 13 I remember building a small toy working crane using dads hand tools.

I also ended up in a hospital in Denver due to what was thought to be a very serious infection, and as an extremely bored 11 year old was driving the nurses crazy, and they asked the folks to figure out something that would keep me seriously distracted for as much of the time as possible. The one thing that finally worked was when they bought a magazine that normally only adult men who liked technology and working with tools read, "Science and Mechanics magazine," for me to read. The nurses were thrilled, because they never heard another peep out of me, and because I was only 11 and was very small for my age anyway, they told mom that it was amazing for them to see this tiny boy absolutely absorbed in reading such a magazine. I think I probably read it cover to cover in just a couple of days. (Mom told me the story many years later.) When we got home from the hospital I ask the folks to subscribe that magazine for me, they did not subscribe to that one, but did subscribe to Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, switching back and forth every year. I always would read them cover to cover in a couple of days, and those magazines often had things on woodworking/carpentry back then.

I can't remember how I got acquainted with a woodworking plane, but I remember that I already knew how to adjust and use one before I started a woodshop class in high school. I still have my early woodworking/carpentry tools, all of which I still use, except for my first drill which eventually wore out and a couple of others. Because of my low salary and the cost of the tools I didn't get to buy many but bought a Black and Decker 3/8" drill (back then B&D still made very good tools, and the drill I bought was a good one and cost me about 2 days pay I think.) I also bought a good 30 inch level (Sands), and a couple homeowner grade chisels, the good ones were too expensive for me then, a professional grade 16 oz claw hammer and a professional grade 20 oz framing hammer, a utility knife, a couple of nail sets, a chalk line, and finally a blue Vaughn "Superbar." I may have bought a small number of others. Come to think of it my first tape measure eventually wore out, and I don't think I still have my first utility knife (after all, that was around 50 years ago.)

I inherited a tiny number of tools from my grandfather, I think that is how I got my first plane ( a Stanley Bailey #5) which I still have and use. Like Derek, it was love at first "Schhhiiikkk" sound. I also bought a small number of small hand tools at garage sales. Back then you could buy a handsaw at a garage sale for a dollar or usually less. A number of the handsaws had been painted with various images.....a major abomination in my view if the handsaw was a good one.

I also bought a Disston D-8 at an auction, the version made before about 1919, that was in need of a restoration job, and I restored it. Funny thing, there were several saws at the auction, and I bid $7 (again a lot for me at the time,) and for that winning bid I got "choice" of any or all of the saws. There were some very new looking, but not very good saws in the bunch, and the other bidders, all middle age and older men, looked pretty surprised when I went over and picked up the D-8 which needed restoration. The auctioneer knew me, and knew that I worked for a carpenter and knew a good hand saw when I saw one. He saw the look on the other bidders face when I picked up a saw that didn't look too good, so he told the other bidders, "he knew which saw he was bidding on." Of course had I waited I probably could have gotten the D-8 for much less once the other bidders had picked up all of the fairly new looking saws, but I didn't know the other guys had their eyes on the new looking saws, not the good D-8 that was in the bunch. I used that same D-8 today on a project I have been working on.

Anyway, that's how I got started. I think I inherited the interest in tools from my folks, because my grandfather on mom's side managed a lumber yard and had a shop, all of my uncles on both sides either did woodworking/carpentry or their own mechanic work in their spare time, and I have one cousin that went to trade school for carpentry.

At any rate, again, that is how I got started, I still have and use MOST of my early tools as I only bought good quality tools, and the interest has done nothing but grow over the years.

Stew

[David Carroll]

My Grandfather had a machine shop in the back of the old barn/garage he built in the 1920s. I liked being in his shop. It was run by an overhead line shaft, and I remember the levers and flapping leather belts. He also had a set of hand tools for both metal working and woodworking. I was allowed to "play"with some of the tools, but because I showed an interest, my uncles and my brother-in-law soon gave me a small bench and a set of beginners tools. My father wasn't in the picture, but my uncles and neighbors (cousins most of them) mentored me.

I loved industrial arts but was college-bound and so didn't go to trade school. I was interested in Art and Theater and went to the North Carolina School for the Arts to learn Set Design and Stage Carpentry. I loved the practical aspects, but not the Academics and so I left there and worked in regional theaters here in Connecticut for a couple of years until I met my future wife. She went to college and I left the theater, and worked in the trades to support us. Mostly Carpentry and House Painting.

We bought a small house in Massachusetts, where she was going to school, and I needed more steady work, so I tool a job at an old time retail store (A.J. Hastings in Amherst, MA). I worked there for ten years, basically the 1980's. I fixed up our old 1870s-era house and took timber framing classes, old house construction and renovation classes (at Historic Deerfield) when I had time and could scrape up the money. It was during this time that the hand tool bug really hit hard. I couldn't afford power tools, and didn't have much of a shop. I did have access to my wife's college shop (I taught theater students basic shop safety and certified them for use on the power equipment there). But it was hassle to get over to the school every time I needed something, so I started doing things by hand. One of the things the store I worked for sold were magazines. I poured over every issue of Fine Woodworking throughout the decade. I took classes when offered, and worked at building up my kit of hand tools.

The marriage ended and I moved back to Connecticut to be near my family and my kids (two boys). I worked for a cousin's electronics firm as a draftsman and machinist, then finally got my engineering degree going to night school. He also let me live at one of his houses as long as I kept up the place and renovated it. So I did that until I met my next future ex-wife. We bought a house together and I renovated that house. I did have a shop there and did buy some power equipment, but my love was still in hand tools. We had another son and since I was paying child support for the first two, money was tight. Find a woman you don't like and buy her a house, as the saying goes...

I've been working for my cousin, now passed (the company is now owned by his grandchildren!) for well over 30 years. I bought another old house during the first months of the pandemic and am now busy with renovating it. It's an old timber-framed house. I am building myself a studio/hand-tool shop in one of the bedrooms. Woodworking for me these days is mostly limited to house renovations. But I find time to make some small furniture pieces and before the holidays I make my grandchildren (three of them so far) toys and gifts, all handmade.

I plan to retire in a couple of years when I stop paying child support for my youngest boy who will turn 18 in August. A friend of mine from High School is a well known opera singer and is interested in the Ivoryton Playhouse, a local theater I worked in years ago. He keeps sending me job listings for technical theater positions there. I can't do it now (not enough money) but in the future? Who knows!

DC

[Cameron Wood]

The first woodworking project that I recall was a toy sailboat made to sail on the nearby rose garden pond- age five or six. As a kid I had a workbench in my bedroom & made stuff, took apart stuff, made jewelry, slot cars, worked on skateboards, bikes, etc. Many tree forts were built, some of them multi-story elaborate affairs. Preparing to leave the nest, I fixed up a VW bus including cabinets, bed, etc. I had an electric drill with an attachment to use it as a circular saw and an electric sander that had belonged to my father.

Took shop classes in junior high, high school, and community college, but overall self-taught. Started doing construction work at age twenty two, and also woodworking, developing a shop and making cabinets and custom furniture. First Japanese tools showed up in this period.

Got married & moved to more expensive area, so focused on general contracting with woodworking more about making moldings and built-ins, and only occasional furniture projects.

Now after forty five years in the field, semi retired with more time in the shop.

This is my Unisaw shortly after I got & restored it in 1979 at the site of the first house that I built- it's still in use.

Don't have pics of early hand tools but this is from 2004, and one of the more recent proliferation of planes.

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[Kent A Bathurst]

Always had an interest, but no room. Bought a house with a lot of room, but no $$$

Sitting at Churchill Downs.1998 Kentucky Derby. Won by Real Quiet.

I hit the trifecta.

Wife says "That's a lot of money"

I Replied "Nope. That's a lot of woodworking machinery"

[Eric Brown]

I dabbled as a kid. When I bought my house 25 years ago I needed to remodel the two bathrooms. Looking at vanities they were about $700 and they were junk. I used the vanity money to buy a table saw and built my own. Needed some more tools to do other things and, well, it snowballed into a bunch of collections. I have a strong curiosity that drives me to look at the different ways that tools work.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

My story is on my about me page. One thing I could add is that because of skipping school and other naughty activities I was sent to help Grandpa fairly often. Grandpa had a Masters Mechanical education from the Lewis Trade School in Chicago.

When I was a toddler I began to be interested in carpentry. The family was living in a tent near Iowa City. Dad was building us a house. My job was to gather up any tools that were lying around and carry them off to the woods and drop them. I soon learned to drive nails and promoted my self to official builder of rocket ships and rafts. These were constructed by nailing together any stacks of lumber that were laying around with as many nails as time allowed. Dad soon found ways to apply my talents. I spent much of my youth helping him in his cabinet shop and with his building of spec houses and custom homes. I learned about wiring and plumbing from grand dad and worked in the trades in Boston and New Hampshire during the 1980`s. I have a Universal Technician Certification from A.R.I. I have some formal training as a welder and in machine shops. In 1987 I returned to the Midwest with Doreen and two of our three children. I continued to be self employed. In 1998 I started to do construction projects for the Mid Missouri Mandolin Company and remodeling projects for its staff. I was also tasked with developing and building the octave mandolin and electric mandolin. In 2005 the Franklin Guitar Company moved its operations to an adjoining workspace and I started an apprenticeship there. I continue work as a Carpenter and hope to focus on fine woodworking more and more.

[Reed Gray]

Well, my parents told me a story about me being maybe 3 years old, I went out to the garage and found a bag of nails. I pounded them all into the dirt floor and was very proud of myself. I did concrete construction for 30 years and was told by every one I worked for that I was too dang fussy to do concrete work. I probably should have been a finish carpenter. I fell off a deck and blew up a knee, which accelerated an arthritic condition I never knew I had, and I got a job retraining settlement. That was enough to buy the basic tools for a wood shop. Never made a living off of it, but the wood lathe was the best Christmas present I ever bought myself. My dad gave me his hand planes which he bought but didn't use. Now, I am getting back into flat work so I can furnish my house. Only class I ever got straight A's in was PE. Never had any opportunity for shop classes, unfortunately....

robo hippy