Hello, my name is Troy Moore and I would like to submit my long overdue bio to g
ain porch access.
I'm 39 years old and married to Carol, a wonderful woman who tolerates all my ba
d habits (woodworking and downhill skiing). I grew up on a farm in treeless SW
Kansas. Too much hay stacking in the middle of the summer convinced me that I
needed to consider careers other than farming. So I went to college and becam
e an electrical engineer.
I currently fund my bad habits via my daytime job as a software engineer at Los
Alamos National Laboratory. That be in Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA. At the p
resent my efforts are directed at the attitude control system of a small satelli
te named Forte. See http://nis-www.lanl.gov/nis-projects/forte for more on US
tax dollars at work.
I've been interested in woodworking since I was a pup. My first formal introdu
ction was General Shop class when I was a freshman in high school. The wood pr
oject was the standard clipboard or cutting board using only hand tools. The thi
ng I remember most was being anxious to become a sophomore so I could take the n
ext class and have access to the real stuff (the p*w*r t**ls).
After marriage and purchase of a house with a garage, I decided to seriously pur
sue woodworking as a hobby. At that time I was sure the only way to properly w
ork with wood was to amass an armada of tailed apprentices. So I have the requ
ired collection of heavy metal that I use for basic stock preparation.
Several years ago I came to several realizations:
- there were some things I felt very uncomfortable doing
using p*w*r t**ls (ripping small pieces and cutting
stopped dados come to mind)
- I hate to sand (maybe if I could use a plane/scraper, a
lot of sanding would be a thing of the past)
- I wanted to develop some skills that not everyone with
power in their garage possessed (hand cut joints,
especially dovetails)
Thus my migration from rec.norm to OLDTOOLS. I have slowly built up a small ar
senal of hand tools courtesy of the MofA and Tom Bruce. Now I just have to fig
ure out how to use them. I made up a rule that I could not buy another tool un
til I had the most recent sharpened/tuned and ready for use. Soon decide that
was having a negative impact on tool acquisition so that rule was rejected as un
workable.
Unfortunately I still find that I'm more of a virtual woodworker than a practici
ng one. I spend much more time reading this list and books than I spend actual
ly working with wood. On the average I complete one significant piece per year
. Since most of my projects are furniture for our home, SWMBO would like to se
e a significant increase in this rate. I have some of my projects on my web pa
ge if you are interested.
Respectfully submitted for your approval,
Troy Moore
tcmoore@r...
http://www.roadrunner.com/~tcmoore
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