Greetings from the swamps of Southwest Georgia,

I've been lurking around the porch for a few months now and decided it was time 
  to come on up. (Also Roger Birkhead has been threatening to publicly humiliate
   me in front of all you Gentle Galoots if I didn't post my bio). So here it is
...

I am twenty-five and but a youngster in the working of wood. My father never had
   a workshop, never did any woodworking. Nor my father's father. Nor my mother'
s   father. Nor any neighbors. My junior high school didn't even have a shop cla
ss.

In college I would on occasion help friends with various home repair projects,  
 but just rough stuff like cutting 2x4's to length with a skilsaw. Living my   s
enior year in an old, restored hewn log house (ca. 1850), I began to appreciate 
  the craftsmanship that went into such construction. Here was a house 140 years
   old that had been abandoned for decades prior to restoration, and yet its hug
e   timbers of chestnut and oak remained strong, its half-dovetail joints still 
  tight. I knew after my first night there that I would live in my own hewn log 
  house, and that I wanted to do the restoration myself. I just didn't know how 
I   would do this. That its construction was accomplished using only hand tools 
was   simply outside of my realm of comprehension.

After college I went to live in Nepal, ostensibly to do agricultural research.  
 My work there took me to many remote villages, sometimes a week or more hike   
from the nearest road. In the absence of electricity, power tools were scarce.  
 Over the course of that year, I saw and occasionally used (much to the amusemen
t   of my Nepali compadres) all sorts of handtools, mainly agricultural - plows,
   digging tools, harvesting blades. Yet throughout all of that exposure, I neve
r,   while living there, made the connection between their work with handtools a
nd my   taking that experience back to the U.S. My life in Nepal and my life in 
America   I viewed as distinct and separate, though I don't now know why. It was
 not until   I moved to Southwest Georgia, the Ninth Circle of Oldtool Hell, tha
t I started   working with wood. It was an epiphany of sorts. While talking with
 a friend and   dedicated normie about the furniture he had crafted, he offered 
my the use of   his t*bl* s*w and carpentry know-how. Even with all of the recen
t years'   experience I was still firmly entrenched in the mindset that furnitur
e was   something you buy. It comes from a furniture store. Sort of like, vegeta
bles   come from a grocery store. In that one epochal moment my world and self v
iew   were expanded. I set to work.

   Half a dozen picture frames later I began to notice something missing. More t
han the perceived threat to my extemities, when working on the t*bl* s*w I felt 
  
out of control, frantic, rushed. It seemd the s*w was running the show, and I   
was merely an usher. It's screaming noise, clouds of dust, frenetic pace. I try 
  not to live my life in this way, so why engage in such a pursuit? The 'why' is
   because I enjoy working with the wood. The how just seemed imperfect. That's 
  when I started talking to Roger. He got me started with handtools, steered me 
to   the porch, and has been a great source of information and practical know-ho
w. I   knew after my first pass with a plane that I had found that for which I h
ad been   searching.

I awoke this past Monday, after a full weekend's work, scarcely able to lift my 
  arms they were so sore. To watch me plane is not unlike listening to a novice 
  play the violin. But I'm having fun and every once in a while I'll hit that   
groove as a long strip of wood peels smoohtly away....

Kevin Watt