My 'Why I got started' Story

[Iraxl Enb]

the answer is probably that the only sad lot of woodworkers that posts and reads usenet groups is probably a sorry bunch of keyboard tappers!

irax - also a code monkey...

[Casey Stamper]

D K Woods wrote in news:1hxi8y4ap3rdo$.104hg251xb781$. [e-mail]:

My memory is not as good as it used to be but I seem to recall that those same kinds of tests predicted a life of working on cars for me as well. I actually started out pumping gas and gravitated towards the mechanic job (those were the days of Sohio and other full-service "gas stations.") I was a mechanic (and a damn good one) for several years until the lean

80s. I ended up spending 12 years in the Army (still in the USAR) and was considered the "expert" in all things computer/adp-related in each of my positions.

[Chris]

I was about 34 when I started

Got mine at garage/estate sales

I prefer power.

Me too. More Business Analyst than straight coder, but that's just semantics.

I always say that if the lights went out tomorrow, my whole career would disappear.

No Doug, you are not alone. Seems like we have taken up woodworking for similar reasons. I had to laugh at your description of a "long, slow, painful path" though because I rather enjoy the learning curve, but then I realized that I *used* to feel that way too when I started

- I guess I just learned to slow down and enjoy. Unlike our profession where we have to hurry up to learn new technology while it is still viable, with woodworking things don't change as quickly so learn at your own pace and ENJOY!

-Chris

[Casey Stamper]

Iraxl Enb wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I'd thought of that too. You know what they say about statistics!

[Mike S.]

From reading all the other replies, I'd say that you, me, and everyone else is pretty much in the same company. That is, most all of the replies are from people in the IT industry who spend most of their work time with a computer, pounding out something through the keyboard and seeing this electronic box do what they want (or, what they think they told the computer to do. As a programmer I know all too well that what the computer actually does and what you want it to do can be two very different things).

I'm a craftsman, and that's what I tell anyone who asks. I love creating things, or learning how things work by tearing into 'em and putting it all back together (I picked up a '78 Trans-Am and am in this very process - it's a bit of a basketcase, but it's better than when I got it and I'm learning a hell of a lot). I'm most happy when I can create something and use it/feel it/show it off, it's also great to see other people's reactions since they can fully appreciate something concrete more so than something they experience through cyberspace.

As for getting started in woodworking, well I guess I can say that I was born into it. My Dad had started a couple years before I was born, and one of the first things he made was a wooden snake toy for me - I've still got it, 27 years later. While it is a hobby for me, it's also a release - a way to escape from the electronic world and relax as I admire the figure of an exotic board, or that sharp pain complements of an unseen splinter. Being a craftsman lets me see what I make and understand it with my hands, instead of "seeing" what it is in my mind and thinking about how it works.

- Mike

[adb]

I suspect it also has something to do with what another poster alluded to - with both IT work and programming, you never have anything tangible. I moved from a network admin/IT background to programming because I was tired of "policeman syndrome". (bust your keister keeping everything on an even keel, and when you don't anticipate EVERYthing it hits the fan because you just should have been more omnicient... IE, the only time folks notice you is when something goes wrong) I thought that having an actual _project_ to work on with an _end_ and _results_ would be much more satisfying. Ha! Out of five projects in four years, ONE of them actually went to completion. All the rest had either the external partner fail to deliver and/or management pull the plug to "reallocate resources".

Some time in there I purchased a TS to start doing a few things on the new house. After all, grandpa had been a handyman/woodworker/carpenter by necessity and some of my fondest memories of him were spending time in the shop smelling the sawdust. Finishing my first project - a hastily conceived glider rocker for my two-year-old gave me a heretofore untold measure of satisfaction. (compliments to the effect of "you MADE that?!!" from friends and relatives didn't hurt either) A second project in a "little shop that could mark II" (

) still isn't finished, but it elicited similar remarks and (even more appealing) proof to the SWMBO that I did have the ability to make something that "looked nice".

Between then and now I've left one job, moved across state lines, lived with in-laws, found another job, sold and bought a house, and actually have a shop now. (10x16 but it's MINE!!) Haven't had much time to do anything other than turn around. (oh yeah, and baby #3 due in october) I still have a 4"x4" square of the luan plywood I used for the lill' shop oiled and finished pegged to my cubicle wall. Every so often I'll take it down and run my fingers over it's finished surface and reflect on how much I enjoyed building. And the deep sense of satisfaction I received. And how I still enjoy looking at my creations.

And then wonder why the heck I'm still sitting in the cubicle. =^) (besides the money issue, I think it's also because I'd hate to do woodworking as a job...and start hating it!)

-adb

[Doug]

Man, great stories! It's always good to read this kind of stuff. Now I know I'm not off on some tangent that doesn't make any sense!

I know I'll enjoy the learning curve more once I have a general idea of what I'm doing. Right now I'm mortising the legs of my workbench base, but it seems like it's taking forever. I suspect it just takes time, and certainly practice helps, but I'm probably feeling impatient because I just want my bench done. The recent heat hasn't helped, either (I'm building in my garage).

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to respond. It really helped to hear all the stories.

doug.

[adb]

Unlike our

Has it occured to anyone else the irony that an $800 table saw will be useful 20 years from now, while a $1500 "top of the line" PC will be almost completely obsolete and useless in < 10? That thought brought me up short awhile back when I was thinking of upgrading the graphics card in my PC.

"Wow", thought I, "$150 for a geforce - they've come down!! Gotta get me one of those"

And then I thought "hmm...graphics card that'll be obsolete in 2 years, or a new router, drill, plane that I'll use for the next 5-10+. Gee."

It was a quite a paradigm shift when I realized how a $200 gizmo seems a bargin when it used to be $600, and then figured the money's useful life when invested in woodworking.

(Gizmoholism. Now _that's_ an expensive hobby!!)

I append to my earlier post. I like woodworking not just to hold something tangible, but to invest in tools and skills that won't be rendered "almost completely useless" in 5 years.

-adb

[Silvan]

I'm sort of like you, but I think I took it even further than you did. I

*should* have been a code monkey. I'm a year younger than you. You know how it was back then. Prime time, man. We grew up with computers, lived on BBSes, and all figured we were on the cutting edge of the future, because we were computer savvy people in an age when most people had no idea how to use one. All my friends got CS degrees, and moved on (and moved way the hell away) while I got a BA in foreign languages with absolutely not one shred of job potential here or anywhere else.

I've been a manual labororer of one sort or another ever since. No jobs in my field, and I had to eat. I had no luck selling myself as a computer guy without paper, and I never could bring myself to go back and get the paper. I find in the face of it all that the root of all this is an unconsious but nevertheless intentional choice. The prospect of working with computers professionally would just take all the joy out of it for me. Professional uses for these things suck, and I've never met a happy programmer either. In fact, all my big money moved-far-away friends are absolutely miserable. One of them I presume to be dead by his own hand, though he might have just gone total recluse.

Anyway, a little further along in life, I find I have more in common with the people here who talk about the importance of shop classes, and with the farmers I've come to know in the years since, than I do with most "professional" people I've encountered in my lifetime. I myself never stepped foot in the "redneck wing" of my high school, because I was "too good" for that kind of future, but I've really changed, and I quite regret that I missed out on the opportunity to get some experience with such things much earlier in life.

I'd desperately like to quit being a truck driver, but what I'd _like_ to do with my life is become a mechanical problem solver. Not a car mechanic or anything like that, but someone who has to figure out how to get things going with baling wire and bubble gum in the nick of time. I'm too much of a math retard to even daydream about engineering, but if I could figure out some way to get paid for "improvisational" engineering, I'd be a happy man.

Junk Yard Wars is my favorite show, and most of the fun projects I've done lately have involved making something without spending any money for materials. My junkyard trebuchet, for example. A piece of railroad track, the axle and bearings from a salvaged Nordic Trac, the top from an old end table, 2x4 and plywood scraps left over from some project or other... I wish I could figure out a way to apply this kind of thing toward earning my daily bread.

I do love to make things, to have tangible things at the end of the day, and I can relate to your feelings there. My best programming years were when DOS was king, so you can imagine just how well-respected my skills are today. All those hours were for nothing more solid than dust in the wind, and anything I do today is heading for the same fate. It's hard to get excited about choosing between another rewrite or letting a project fade away. If I build a plant stand or a hutch or something instead, it will still be around for my kids to fight over when I turn to dust in the wind myself.

[HarryM]

"Leon" wrote in message news:p%c3b.687$ [e-mail]...

My father encouraged me to take vocational agriculture in school, so I missed out on any woodworking instruction. However, when I got married, we needed a cabinet for our stereo equipment. I used white pine for a simple open shelf unit. I was teaching English in high school, and the shop teacher helped me build a walnut speaker enclosure. Then I built a checkerboard, or at least started one. It cost me the tips of five fingers. But a year later, I was back in the shop building a maple china hutch. Then I built an 18x24 addition to our home, complete with kitchen cabinets, a fireplace and built-in entertainment center. A friend asked me to build cabinets in her utility room, so I did. From then on, there was a never-ending list of customers for cabinets during summer vacations from school. When my grandchildren arrived, I built wood toys for them -- and discovered a market for toys "like I had when I was a kid." No more going to other people's houses to work -- I could build in my shop at any hour of the day or night and sell the toys to shops or directly at craft fairs. When I retired in '94, I built more toys and went to more craft fairs. My wife took on the task of sanding and finishing. We really enjoyed the travel and the people we met. Didn't make as much money as I did building cabinets, but it was lots more fun. About 60% or our present sales are to return customers. Since my surgery for prostate cancer two years ago, I have slowed down considerably, but I'm still making sawdust. Just finished a large red oak cabinet for videos and DVDs for our home and a ten-foot wide entertainment center for a neighbor, and our stock of walnut, maple, cherry and oak toys [trains, pull toys, trucks, etc.] is ready for the fall craft season. We have discontinued the summer shows because of the heat. My biggest problem has been "too many tools, too little room." And finding enough time to build projects for myself.

[Mike Cornelius]

I started as a computer programmer in 1971. I wrote programs, designed systems, and spent over 20 years as a computer consultant, traveling much of the US, Canada and Europe. Then a funny thing started happening around the middle of the 1990's. I was working with fewer and fewer Americans. Most of the people I was working with were Indians, in this country on visa's. I have nothing bad to say about these folks. They were different than me, but, just like me, they were trying to make a buck. I do, however take issue with those who would export skills that can be handled better by the locals. In January 2000, I was layed off and have not been able to find a suitable job in the industry. There's not too much market for a 54 year old 'code monkey'.

Unlike many in this forum, I enjoyed being a code monkey. Even though I knew that the code I was creating would be out-dated over time, I always got a thrill out of creating things that didn't previously exist. And besides, I got frequent call-backs to update systems I had created as available technology changed.

Woodworking has probably saved my sanity, what little of it I have. The skill sets are different. Writing code, it was usually my task to make things work faster and more efficient. Woodworking takes more skill and more finesse and, because I'm still a newbie, the frustration level is about the same. The main difference is in the financial compensation. I still feed my family, but gone are the days of financial liquidity. I work three jobs, web design, Home Depot associate, and furniture builder. In the past 2+ years I have not put on a tie, sat in a cubicle or had to fight traffic. I'd love to get a job creating computer systems to solve business problems, but as time goes on and I become more unemployable in this field, I find that the desire is starting to wane. I'm having fun creating things that regular people can use. Most of them do stop to smell the stain and to run their fingers over a well routed corner. Life's not too much different for me, except that I deal with a much better class of people.