A lot of my old bio still fits, but there have been some changes.
Hi! I suffer from two serious debilitating conditions: I hoard wood and I
gather old tools. Calling my tools a 'collection' would be too kind. I
love wood: it's warmth, beauty, and versatility. I'm a firm believer in the
bumper sticker I saw once: "He who dies with the most wood wins."
Unfortunately, my less-serious debilitating conditions interfere with my
woodworking: joint problems and nerve damage. I've been on disability since
2002 and have faced slow erosion. But I don't spend my time worrying about
what I can't do: I just do what I can.
We heat with wood, so I find a lot of interesting logs: elm, walnut, maple,
basswood . . . I save what I can and seal the ends, so I have a fair supply
of local woods. I'm always on the lookout for non-local wood, though!
Through the largesse of some galoots, I have a little bit of holly, osage
orange, laurel, and a little bit of some even harder to find. I will
occasionally make something, and I've grown to love a good hand planed
finish. I hope someday to achieve . . . a good hand planed finish. I'm
still trying.
I first discovered the capability and richness of traditional hand tools in
the late 1990's after we moved to our current home. Before then, I spent a
lot of time and money trying to acquire tailed apprentices. I started to
assemble a working set of planes, chisels and saws; then I discovered what
was available in local and online auctions, and I was hooked! One quirk
that I have is that given a choice, I will always choose the oldest tool
that will do the job. I actually use my prelateral planes, and one of my
cherished posessions is an incannel gouge from the 18th century, a go-to
tool for hogging out waste.
I spent a fair amount of money on auctions and was always ready to give an
old tool a home for a while, so despite our living on a fixed income, I've
accumulated a lot of the common tools. I think I have almost twenty #5
Stanley planes. It's a shame I live so far from Australia, since I might be
able to help solve their #5 shortage single handedly. I have a lot of these
tools with the understanding from SWMBO that they will be fixed up and sold
as time allows. It will take a lot of time, and I have the tendency to want
to keep tools that I put a lot of work into . . . I imagine that nobody else
on this list has that problem, but there it is.
A problem that I have is that while I really enjoy mastering new skills, I
have a hard time sticking with something once I've developed the skill. If
I can ride the wave of enthusiasm to the end of a project, I'm in good
shape. If not, I will have trouble carrying it through to completion. I
hope that I will continue learning and enjoying woodworking for the rest of
my life. There's enough to learn. With the help and prodding of a galoot
from the other end of the country, I've recently started to use scrapers.
Now, I hope I can quit all that sanding and get better results. That's one
of many ways that I enjoy the old tools list so much - there's an incredible
reservoir of knowledge and skill with a pipeline right to my desktop. I
couldn't get a better resource for a million dollars.
My wife and I are Christians of the don't-rub-it-in-your-face variety, with
two girls, 18 and 15, who occasionally will pick up a tool, and a third girl
who left us last year. Our daughters both prefer hand tools, but they don't
have the 'bug' yet! Although I have hopes for the older one and pyrography.
We live in an 1850's italianate in an Erie Canal town in western New York
state. It's an ongoing battle between it falling down and us fixing it up.
I'll let you know if either happens.
Thanks for all the advice, assistance, tools, wood, and well-wishes, which
sometimes are the most valuable thing of all.
Gary K(atsanis)
Close to Buffalo NY, USA
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