I am basically just an average guy who happens to love being around woodworking.  I grew up around woodworking by watching my father who was a finish carpenter.  He also worked as a mill man in more than one lumber yard in his lifetime.  I used to watch him build small pieces of furniture.  One piece in particular was a writing desk that he made for my mother out of cedar. Boy was that really neat.

My father died at a fairly early age (51 years old when he died) from a massive heart attack.  But it was from him and being around him that I inherited the interest in woodworking.  Our family was not a very affluent family and as a result, I didn't get to experience any of the woodworking early in my life.  My father built the things that he did by using the lumber yard's tools and equipment.  He did not have a home shop or very many tools of his own.  Watching him while I was a young boy go through the stages of projects that he worked on stayed with me however. 

When I left home and started raising my family, it became increasingly difficult to be able to put back any extra money to get equipment or tools to even think about doing any woodworking of any kind.  That lasted until my kids were through college and I was at a point that I could start putting away some cash for my retirement.  I began to do that at around the age of 40.  I am, as of this writing, approaching 64 years of age.

About 3 years ago (a little more than the age of 60), I began to purchase some smaller pieces of woodworking equipment and tools.  I subscribed to several woodworking magazines and started to familiarize myself with some of the more common entry level skills from articles in those magazines.  I have now completed several smaller projects since that time and also gotten brave enough to tackle some larger ones such as a computer desk for my office, a sewing and crafts hutch for my wife and, believe it or not, a complete set of upper and lower cabinets for our kitchen.

The kitchen cabinets are made from red oak.  I'll be uploading photos of these cabinets to the web site very soon. 

Anyway, back to me.  I am about a year and a half away from retirement from my day job as the engineering director for a medium sized plastic extrusion company in Elkhart, Indiana.  Back in 1996, I built a web site centered around old antique tractors which was another one of my interests sparked from some of my childhood memories living on a farm.  If anyone is interested in checking out the site which is called "Fastrac", you would certainly be welcome.

Since I had gained some experience building that web site, I thought that it would be kind of neat to build another site centered around the hobby of woodworking.  I don't intend to make this new site evolve into a commercial site.  I just want to be able to occupy my time when I retire by developing and maintaining these two sites and enjoy the woodworking.  I think everyone dreams about this time in their lives.....that they could be in a position to enjoy themselves doing what you want to do (instead of for someone else), in something that you have a keen interest in, and in doing it with a passion.

That's what I intend to do!  Enjoy maintaining these two web sites, working on projects in my wood shop, and conversing with you all!  I want to encourage you to share anything that you can with me, photos of your shop, some of your stories, maybe some tips or techniques that you have discovered, or articles that you have written.  E-mail me what you have and I'll see to it that it gets posted on the site.

In the meantime, I'll be adding new stuff as often as I can accumulate it.

Dave
dave@oldaveswoodshop.com