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119128 "Kevin Tan" <smooth-planer@e...> 2003‑06‑23 Bios from Singapore
Hello all,

I'm Kevin Tan and I first saw daylight exactly 42 years ago (Today being
my birthday), and grew up here in Singapore, an island situated in
South-East Asia with a paltry landmass of 250 square miles, but filled to
the brim with about 4 million people.

My current day job is film/video directing & producing, and I've been
married for about 2 years, and have been involved with woodworking for
about 6 - 7 years.

When I was a kid in junior high, I had a couple of years fooling around
the wood shop, but most of my wood working skills was picked up during my
2 1/2 years miltary conscription service which is compulsory for all male
citizen of Singapore between the age of 18 to 21. A knee injury took me
out of active training and my CO gave me a choice of being the company
clerk or to take charge of the camp wood shop, and I chose the latter for
the simple reason of staying out of the brass' sight!

I'm not sure if I'm a galoot in the true sense of the word, as not all of
the 150 odd pieces of handtools in my collection are of vintage origin.
Within this lot, about 50 pieces are hand planes with the rest being
chisels, saws, bit braces, drills and lay-out/marking tools. As mentioned,
this was collected over the past 5 years or so, some locally, some from
e-Bay, aome from familiar names like Patrick Leach, Bob Kaune, Martin
Donnelly, Tom Bruce, etc. The non-vintage tools comes from Lie-Nielsen,
Veritas, ECE and others.

Before all this came to be, I'd started out as a DIY enthusiast with a
whole bunch of tailed tools, which I hardly use today, preferring the
relative silence and peace of non corded hand tools, and the obvious
pleasure of their usage.

Being a wood-worker bent on working with hand tools in Singapore is
summed-up in one word; Lonely! To date, I've not met another tool
enthusiast here in Singapore who can be bothered with using fine hand
tools and absolutely nobody I can show-off my prized Stanley #85 scraper
or anyone who can appreciate my favorite pre-war Norris smoother. I read
with envy about handplane competition and meetings for tools auctions...

Recently, I met Steve Reynold on the internet and he was intrigued that I
might just be the sole Singaporean who'd qualify as a galoot and he urged
me to join the porch, so here I am.

It would be my pleasure to hear from anyone hanging round the porch who
would like to know about practicing woodworking in Singapore.

Warmly,
Kevin Tan, Singapore
June 23rd 2003. 



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