OldTools Archive

Recent Bios FAQ

163932 dcarr10760@a... 2006‑10‑09 Bio Reposted (lengthy)
Galoots one and all!

Executive Summary: My Bio never made it to the archive so here
it is again. I like old tools and am glad to be here!

Long version

I was browsing the archives as I do regularly and saw the Bio Tab and
thought I would read over my bio. Much to my surprise I didn't have
one. In a moment of clarity last year I had saved a copy of it. I send
it again, annotated, in hopes that it will find its way to the 
biosphere.

Greetings everybody! I have been lurking for awhile now, mostly in the
archives and thought it would be good to step out onto the porch.

A bit about me: I'm 45 [now 46], I have three sons 17, 14 and 6 months
[18, 15 and 14 months]. I work in my family’s electronics firm
designing high voltage test equipment and machinery. But I have been
interested in woodworking as long as I can remember.

I followed the normal trajectory (tailed tools and little baby food 
jars
screwed up underneath shelves holding hardware) until I was in my
mid twenties. I lived then in an apartment in a creaky old Victorian 
house.
The landlady lived directly below and was concerned about keeping
things quiet. I started making furniture with hand tools in the living
room of that apartment as quietly as possible.

About that time I stumbled across a copy of the Woodcraft catalog
and the lust for shiny hand tools began.

I took a Timber Framing workshop at the Hancock Shaker Village
taught by Jack Sobon. He used hand tools exclusively, and had quite
a compliment of antique tools: froes, adzes, handsaws, broadaxes, slicks
and firmer chisels. My enthusiasm for old tools was born that week.
Seeing him work so (seemingly) effortlessly and quickly with these tools
really made me realize that I didn't need Alternating Current directly
involved in my woodworking.

This was back in 1984 or so. While I was one of the first guys on my
block with a home computer and have been on the Internet now
for nearly ten years, somehow I missed the online woodworking
community completely…until now.

In the past year or two I did join several woodworking forums. While 
they
have a bunch of great folks, there’s a bit too much “I can't get my
Grizzly band saw to track strait” and “I want to build my girlfriend a
Hepplewhite table out of MDF but the only tools I own are a cordless 
drill,
a circular saw and a metric socket wrench set, how do I begin?”

So, while I am definitely not elitist in my hand tool use, I was always 
on
the lookout for a group that was a bit more focused on my particular
woodworking interests. So I managed to find Y’all.
Better late than never, I suppose.

My interests of late center around building (or compiling) a set of 
18th
century tools and building a joiners chest to house them.
Eventually using them to build reproduction period furniture.

Let me apologize straight off if I have violated any etiquette, please 
be
gentle with me if I rock on any tails (or dragging knuckles).
Glad to be here!

David Carroll

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Recent Bios FAQ