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How Did You Get Introduced to Woodworking?

Woodworking related and funny too........... someone else talked about getting their "first" hammer from their grandfather, well me too.

When I was about 12, my granddad built a new house, well that summer my Dad, three of my uncles, my older brother, and maybe 5 or 6 other cousins all helped out building the house. Most of my family are electricians, but they also know their way around carpentry etc. Well, I was a full fledged member of the crew, I got my own carpenters pouch, and hammer. I had trouble driving the large spikes, my granddad must have showed me a hundred times NOT to choke up on the handle, but to have your pinky finger right at or near the bottom of the handle, I kept choking up on the handle, about halfway.

one day at lunch, granddad asked to see my hammer, I handed it over to him, he picked up his skill saw, and cut about 6" off the handle........ :eek: He said "Well, you don't use it anyway........." :rolleyes: :rofl:

I had to work the rest of the day with that short handled hammer, boy that sucked. Then, the next morning, he gave me the few bucks a new handle cost to run down to the hardware store and buy one, which he helped me change over, so I had a proper hammer again. I've never forgotten that lesson, and every time I hold a hammer, especially if I'm pounding spikes, I remember that lesson.

Just thought it might make some of you smile.

Cheers!:wave:
 
That is a great story Stu. I still choke up on the hammer sometimes:eek:

Thanks for all the great posts guys.

In response this "it`s never occured to me that something can`t be done", I have a funny little tidbit.

Whenever somebody finds out that I am a woodworker, for some reason, they always ask me what I "can" build, so my response is always "anything" then they proceed to ask me if I can build something in specific and my answer is always "yes" no matter what it is, though I must admit that nobody has ever asked me if I could build something crazy.

The reason is because I once asked an iron worker if he could build something a little more complicated than normal and he just looked at me like I was an idiot, so I swore from the day I started woodworking that I'd would never turn something down just because it seemed "too hard" to build.

Anyway, great posts guys, keep'em coming.
 
I was 5 that summer. I threw a punch at my three year old sister. The problem was created by a multi-paned storm door between me and her. The pane I broke with my punch put a deep cut on my wrist. My mother was outside nearby and she was hanging clothes on a clothesline. She, 8 months pregnant, heard me scream and chased me twice around a covered sandbox my father was building in his free time. I hit the fence gate ahead of her, opened the gate and escaped into the dead end street. A neighbor lady washing dishes at her kitchen sink witnessed the event through a kitchen window and came out and caught me. At the emergency room the doctor put in several stitches. The wrist hurt and even though I was encouraged by the doctor and my parents I refused to use that hand and wrist. My father was building that covered sandbox at the time. He bought a miniture carpenter set (fully functional) and asked me to help him finish the sandbox. The hand got better.
 
I'm pretty much self-teaching myself, keeping eyes open for books and forums like this one as well as ears for advice from others in the hobby, mainly people met from forums like here.

I've always liked making things and a few years ago picked up a used Delta 12" RAS as my first stationary tool. I was working with a friend on a tentmaking project (still not completed, long story) and needed to make a 60 degree miter at the end of an 8' strip of plywood (already ripped to ~1 1/2" wide).

The CMS machines capable of such a cut were quite costly and I figured that if I was spending that kind of cash I'd just as soon have a tool that did more than one kind of cutting. This led to my personal RAS or TS debate. At the time I didn't have room to setup a TS like I would want to (still don't), felt that the RAS would be safer for the project in mind than a TS and in general am kind of nervous about using a TS but am confident with using a RAS (I know, I'm definitely in the minority on this one :wave: ) so I started looking for a decent RAS and quickly decided that used would be the way to go and got lucky enough to find the one I did.

Just after bringing the RAS home, I heard about the PC8529 for $100 at the local BORG on a different forum. I figured that I could make a quick router table* and then be able to make a decent tabletop for the RAS with the 8529 so I went and got one (in retrospect, I should have bought lottery tickets back then, getting so lucky with rather ignorant tool decisions). After finishing the project I figured that I should at least consider learning about woodworking in general since I had a decent start on tools.

I think we all know how slippery the slope is and I now have a modestly equipped shop space with a floor standing drill press, 6" jointer, lunchbox planer, 14" bandsaw and a few other power and hand tools to round things out. I'm not the prolific of woodworkers - in fact I consider myself at the cusp of going from being a tool collector to being a hobbyist woodworker right at the moment, but I still have all 10 fingers and I'm learning and smiling - the most important things for a hobbyist.

* As an aside, my first router table was made by simply replacing the 7/16" OSB top of a miniatures gaming table with a sheet of 3/4" MDF. Yes, it was a 4' by 8' router table. I'm surprised that the gal who is now my wife stayed together with me after I had asked her "Can you be a quick second set of hands to halp me put this new tabletop on?" after hoisting that full sheet of MDF. Prior to investing in the RAS and other tools, I thought woodworking was spending 3 hours looking for straight studs at the Borg, having them cut to length there and screwing them together at home. Progress is slowly happening. :)
 
Took a little WWing in high school, in 1964, a brand new school with tech shops. I was in Grade 10, they partnered everyone one up in my class to build a small bookcase with slider doors for each classroom in the new school. But I was the odd man out, had to build it all by myself!:eek: Grades 11 & 12 , I didn't see much of the wood shop, mostly electrical class with some machine shop and auto mechanics. Forward ahead several years, I was married a few years, it was about about 1971, I bought a Sears 12" RAS. Learned from my mistakes, and started to get some more tools over the next few years, Sears Craftsman of course , a 12" contractor saw, router, belt sander, jig saw. Popular Mechanics magazine supplied project plans. By 1980 I had built a 22x40 garage with the last 16 ft being the woodworking shop. Went and bought a planer, a 12" Foley Bel-Saw and started to work with solid wood. Before that it was mostly particle board, plywood,or pre surfaced pine for projects. By 1986 I had moved, built and addition to an old house and a small barn style garage as a shop. Then a neighbor asked if I could reface their kitchen cupboards with RP arched topped oak doors and then I really got the bug, taking the money I made and getting a 20" planer, then more kitchen jobs, upgrading all the tools. Twenty years later I'm still upgrading tools, and still doing odd woodworking jobs when they come along.:D
 
Great thread! I've enjoyed reading what everyone has posted!

One of my first woodworking memories was sanding a dresser dad was refinishing for me. I HATED sanding! Every time I thought it was good, he said NOPE! Dad had a RAS down in the shop and was probably the first power tool I ever worked with! Never really made anything. When I moved out on my own I bought some DIY kits for furniture since it was all I could afford. Still have a cheap entertainment center I made. I've always had the interest, but haven't started actually doing anything until the last few years. The mags were always great and inspiring, but I always questioned my abilities! I have learned over the years that If I put my mind to something, I can usually achieve it!
 
I've always liked anything made of wood. I remember telling my grandparents how much I like their coffee table w/inset glass top when I was just a small boy. I also remember being shocked when they told me my dad made it when he was in high school. The love for all things wood never left me and I took shop in high school for as many years as they'd let me. Been working with wood in my own way ever since. I've just gotten more sophisticated in my wood choices over the years and upgraded to some "real" tools about six years ago.
 
I find it curious that there are quite a few folks that were introduced to woodworking in junior high or high school, as I was. It scares me to think that many of the shops are being pulled from schools. Many of the middle/junior high and high schools don't have any woodworking or metalworking shops at all anymore, they're being replaced with CAD programs and similar.

What will happen with the kids of today as less and less get exposed to working wood and metal to create things?

Pretty darn scary to me. Many of them will have a difficult time hanging a picture, or trimming a door/window...most won't be able to install a pre-hung door, let alone hang one themselves.

We could be in for a rough future in woodworking. :(
 
Woodwork was always my best subject at school - I did it to 'A' level (the exams you take in England at 18 prior to going to university)

I then trained to be a schoolteacher (woodwork and physics!) but never followed it through. Instead I went into the furniture retail business eventually having my own large store.

Then... NORM!!!

I got hooked on 'The New Yankee Workshop' as soon as cable TV came to our street. Pretty soon I found myself watching 3 or 4 episodes a day, even sneaking home from the store for half an hour while my wife was at work to catch the 2.30 episode. 'Just popping to the bank, guys!' would be my lame excuse.

Naturally, I started on the slippery slope of aquiring all the tools that Norm had! A small section of the warehouse at the back of the store was studded off as a workshop for 'doing repairs' and then 'making specials'. All tax-deductable of course, and not at all 'Duncan's Den'!

Five years later I've got rid of the store and make my living as a cabinet maker. I feel like I've come full circle and wish I'd done it 30 years ago!

Thanks, Norm!
 
Wow, this is a great thread. :thumb:
Actually, all I wanted to do was get a dremel and make little doodads. Got the dremel, but never made the doodads. I started carving out small logs and then I thought, I need a cabinet for finishing supplies. But then I needed a table saw to cut the plywood for the cabinets, but HD had such a good deal on a rigid band saw:D, couldn't pass that up:doh: and too make a long story short,;) I have more tools then anybody else I know. I make all sorts of different stuff (of course a weekend project still takes me 6-9 months to complete),I don't consider my self very good, but I am learning, I get to converse :type:with some great people on these woodworking forums and more importantly I am having fun:wave:
 
I guess that I got exposed to wood working from the time I was very small. My father was a minister and it seemed like there was always a project going on at what ever church he was in. Most of these churches were small churches in Oklahoma, West Texas, and New Mexico. There was almost always someone that knew what they were doing. And I would always like to try and help. Don't know how much of a help I really was. But I always seemed to learn something.

When I was in 6th or 7th grade, my father decided to try and make some improvements to the old travel trailer they owned. We made a bunk bed above the dining table and some other improvements too.

Then in 10th grade I took a shop class. I can't say that I really learned much in that class. The teacher seemed to be afraid to let any of us use the power tools. There was a test you had to take for each specific power tool. It seemed that not one of us could pass the test regardless of how many times we tried to take the it. Pass or fail was determined by the teacher.

What really helped was the job I got working at a summer camp about 40 miles from home in the mountains of New Mexico. I worked there 2 summers while in high school. I started out doing cleaning, but before long, I was helping a old timer (he seemed like at that time, most likely, he was not any older than I am now) who was a jack of all trades. From working with him, I learned how to do carpentry, electrical, plumbing, cut down pine trees with a chain saw, skin off the bark with a draw knife and build fences with the wood. I also got to run front end loaders, dump trucks, and other equipment. It was hard work but I learned a ton of good stuff.

After high school, I worked as a motorcycle mechanic and got married. We purchased a mobile home and I built some things for it. During this time I also helped my Father-in-law build a carport for his home. The things I had learned from working at the summer camp really helped. My Father-in-law also had a friend that was a finish carpenter and I learned a lot about how good finish work should be done from him (not to say that mine was anywhere as good his his).

The woodworking and other things kind of went on the back burner when I decided to go to back to school and get a degree.

A few years went by when there was no woodworking going on. Then one day, I saw a new show that came on PBS. That's right, NYW with Norm. I got interested and started watching. LOML also started watching and would say things like why don't you make one of those for me. So, I started to get back into woodworking as a hobby. I never did make an exact copy of one of Norms projects, but would take what I learned from him and apply it to variations or other projects.

Started out with some simple things, and then moved on to some more complex projects. One of those was to make a island to go into our kitchen. LOML wanted the island cabinet and doors to match the existing cabinets and raised panel doors. It turned out well enough that when anyone would come into the house, they would think that it was build with the house. Our kids were much younger during this time, and I was busy with them and my engineering job, so I really didn't do as much woodworking during that time as I would have liked.

When we moved out of the old house and into the new house, my first "official project" was to build the plantation shutters. Of course, many other projects were started and completed before I finished my first batch of Plantation shutters.

Now, my youngest is a senior in high school this year. Both of my sons have taken shop during their high school years. But, I'm really surprised that what they teach them in wood shop. Now it is CNC wood cutting machines. I'm not sure that they ever really learned that much about woodworking the way I think of it. But, at least this school system still has a woodworking and welding class.
 
Wow, Mike, that post was even longer than mine I think. :)

I'm really happy with the turn out of this thread, I feel like I've gotten to know each one of you a little bit better. Thanks for all the great posts guys. (like I said before, all the cool girls are guys too).

I just want you guys to know that I AM reading each and every one of your posts in full, so don't worry if you feel you got a little carried away, I'll still read it. :thumb:
 
Longer ago than I like to think about, I was a young rock and roller. Got into building my own speaker cabinets. Fast forward 100 years, I got the bug to get into woodworking minus the 1000 watt requirements and here I am.
 
"It scares me to think that many of the shops are being pulled from schools."

Alan,

I hear a lot of people say this, and I'm always puzzled. I'm a man of many vices, and one of my worst vices is that I'm an academic traditionalist. I believe there should only be eight subjects: the Trivium, the Quadrivium, and philosophy. ;) You don't get more traditionalist than that. ;)

In fact, the history of shop classes seems just a one century blip in the history of education, from the mid to late 19th to the mid to late 20th. Lots of people think of it as the Booker T. Washington view (give them trades and there won't be social unrest). That was quite a change from the early 19th century, when the phrase 'give them shakespeare or fight them on the barricades' was actually uttered in parliament. ;)

I'd be very interested to know whether the school systems our students will be competing against, french or german, japanese or chinese, have shop classes these days... ;)

Thanks, Bill
(who, though ancient, was never even offered a shop class... ;)
 
Bill Lantry said:
....In fact, the history of shop classes seems just a one century blip in the history of education, from the mid to late 19th to the mid to late 20th. ......
Click to expand...
Possibly so Bill but to me that begs the question of how many years full time schooling the average child had before that period. I would guess that most of the trades were learned by indenture apprentices before that time. The only real difference being that there was nothing but shop class available to them. Oh - and the rest either worked in the fields, laboured or starved. Unless they were lucky enough to be born into a family that could give them the benefits of a classical education.

Also, the industrial revolution didn't really take full effect until the early to mid 18th century so there would have been a lower demand for skilled technicians, a phrase which to me means somebody who is able to co-ordinate the use of his brain and his hands to a high degree.


Bill Lantry said:
....I'd be very interested to know whether the school systems our students will be competing against, french or german, japanese or chinese, have shop classes these days...
Click to expand...
I cannot speak for yesterday but when I lived in Germany they had a very highly developed vocational school system and, as far as I can tell, still do. The UK , sadly in my view, does not. Maybe if it did a few fewer of our plumbers would be native Polish speakers. (Eastern europe at least seems to realise that if you have a blocked toilet what is needed is a plumber to unblock it, not 4 journalists to tell everybody about it)

As to "give them trades and there won't be social unrest" I would tend to agree. The reason there won't be social unrest is that the primary drivers to social unrest throughout history, poverty and inequality, tend to effect skilled workers less than unskilled workers. 'give them shakespeare or fight them on the barricades'? - Just because something is said in parliament doesn't make it right or sensible - trust me on that!:)
 
Bill Lantry said:
I'd be very interested to know whether the school systems our students will be competing against, french or german, japanese or chinese, have shop classes these days... ;)
Click to expand...
Yes, I have to believe they will, and as a case in point if you go to Beijing you can see guys welding through the night, building skyscrapers.

I think you've hit onto something though, because the majority of folks will not be interested in handcrafted work, as woodworking provides. Will the robots that can build for the masses make handcrafters obsolete...I doubt that. However, people will buy what is available. They will be forced to buy ready made cabinets from HD when nobody will have the skills to craft by hand.

I 'spose what makes me wonder so much is the fact that I see it happening in the schools around our area, I have been to 2 or 3 auctions in the past 2 years. Ironically, our local middle school has a kinda ok shop, and has a lot of scroll saws they get the kids using, along with an old powermatic table saw, a powermatic and saw, and a variety of other tools. Not anything as nice as I had in school, we had a Rockwell table saw, Yates-American planer, Yates-American lathes (a couple powermatics also), etc...

Our local high school doesn't have shops I don't believe, but they do have a lot of Advanced Placement courses like music theory, or AP Japanese, etc...I think it's a time that the times are a changing, and I don't see tradespeople (what woodworkers are considered) as being a priority in many of the schools these days.

You don't think that will lower the available workers with those skills?
 
i think that those who do choose to learn the trades will be well rewarded in the next coupla decades....as a nation we have an abundance of folks who shuffle paper(figuratively and literally) and a bunch who flap their gums...all for decient to big money and our educational system is geared toward churning out more of this type of "worker"......well "workers" who don`t produce a tangible item at the end of the day can only exist as long as the rest of the world feels like supporting them....
ian`s example of plumbers is a good example..one of my brothers choose to be a plumber after he got his degree mainly `cause it paid better than a "chair" job. after a little more than a decade he`s making almost double what the majority of his alumni are. something to think about..
 
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