OldTools Archive

Recent Bios FAQ

135201 Norm Wood <nbwood@l...> 2004‑07‑17 Bio - Norm Wood
Galoots,

Is it time to post a bio? My make-do bench is littered with spokeshave
parts, a disassembled jointer, some chisels in various stages of
back-flattening, a hand-cranked grinder for which I've built a new
toolrest, a piece of steel I thought I'd try shaping into a marking
knive, a couple of sawsets, and a piece of marble tile decorated with
strips of sandpaper. The lone piece of woodworking at present is a
replacement wedge for a moulding plane.

About a year and a half ago, I was finishing up a project to build a
play fort in our back yard. The fort was mostly complete (done mainly
with power tools) and the last big hurdle was to get some landscape
timbers in place so that I could backfill around the fort with wood
chips. As things turned out, I needed a 9 inch depth of timbers, and my
timbers were 6 inches square. There were probably simpler paths I could
have taken but I decided I would just rip some of the timbers in half
and, since my own circular saw wasn't _big_ enough, I went out and
rented a bigger one. I got it home and, after about a foot of slicing
through one of the timbers, it started smoking, so back it went to the
rental store.

I'd been reading rec.woodworking for awhile. I posted a question about
resawing and got advice along the lines of "find someone with a
bandsaw", "use your tablesaw", "get a chainsaw with a guide" and "find a
sawmill", all of which presented obstacles of some sort or another. I
decided instead to use the saw I already owned, cut from both sides and
finish the cuts with a handsaw.

So off I went to find a ripsaw. I knew _what_ I needed (my dad worked
heavy construction as a carpenter and millwright) but the question was
_where_. Trips to the local lumberyards, "building centers", even my
mainstay Ace Hardware and the local woodshops left me empty handed and
a bunch of confused clerks in my wake. At something of a loss, I went
to the internet and discovered resources that I'm sure are familiar to
you all. The upshot was that within a week, a nice, sharp D-8 ripsaw
showed up on my doorstep, the timbers got ripped, and I stepped up to
the slope.

As I wrapped up the project, a couple of other oldtool opportunities
appeared. The electric drill stalled when I was putting screws into the
timbers, so I dug out the brace I got from my dad and drove them with
it. A couple of rough-sawn 4x4's got smoothed with a #4 I found at a
local flea market.

Since then, there have been more projects, most associated with a tool
find: retoothing and filing a backsaw, lapping plane soles, sharpening
some plane irons and chisels. My first garage sale find (this past
spring) was a little Fulton eggbeater. I picked it up and gave it a
shake to see if there was anything in the handle, but nothing rattled.
When I opened it, I saw why - it was stuffed with fluted bits. A couple
of weeks ago, I finally got the #4 properly (to my eyes anyway) fettled,
and churned out a bucket of wispy poplar and cedar shavings. I've gained
a new appreciation for the handful of tools given to me by my dad.

As a kid, I bought a copy of "The Complete Woodworker" from Garrett-Wade
and was fascinated, both by the book and by the G-W catalogs. The
Foxfire books caught me, too. I was interested in traditional ways of
doing things, probably in part due to the "back to nature" culture of
the 1960s and 1970s, and in part from listening to my folks' stories
about growing up on farms in the Arkansas Ozarks in the '20s and '30s.
Stumbling onto the porch has rekindled those interests, and I'm enjoying
it a lot. Thanks to you all.

And as for the non-OldTool biographical data, I'm a meteorologist (whose
wife gets her forecast from The Weather Channel, thank you very much)
and mechanical engineer. We and our 6-year-old son and 4-year-old
daughter (what - you thought the fort was for me?) make our home in Fort
Collins, Colorado, where we're finally getting some much needed relief
from a long dry spell.

Regards,

Norm Wood


Recent Bios FAQ