OldTools Archive

Recent Bios FAQ

184226 "Dave Pearce" <dave@p...> 2008‑10‑30 Bio (updated)
Since it's been over a year, and I'm signing up for Galootaclaus, I
offer the following update on my bio:=0D
=0D
Born in 1968 and raised in the central Ohio area, I've lived here all
my life.=0D
=0D
Married the love of my life in 1997 and bought a house (and started a
new job) all within a month. In 2001 we had our first daughter, and
since that time, we've had two more daughters. Despite having all girls,
they seem to have a natural tendency to want to help me out with home
improvements and building things. I've got so many projects promised
now, I'll never finish them all. That's a good thing, by the way.=0D
=0D
I'd taken Industrial Arts in junior high and high school but never
really used hand tools much in those classes. When I began to tire of
just doing home improvement projects and wanted more of a challenge, I
started putting together a woodworking shop to build some furniture.
Since most of my experience was with power tools, that's what I was
leaning towards. =0D
=0D
I had no idea how I was going to fund a power tools shop (or find
room), and I had serious misgivings about the dust, noise, and danger
they present to my kids, not to mention myself. Right about this time I
met a friend who introduced me to hand tools and showed me a few things
he'd built. It was a moment of revelation. So, about 2 years ago, I
started collecting and restoring old woodworking tools, with the intent
to use them.=0D
=0D
I started with some planes, chisels, and a few other types of tools,
finally aquiring enough to build a decent workbench (which caused me to
aquire a few more!). You can check out Wiktor's site for the article I
wrote about it. I now have a decent working set at this point, so I'm
starting to make a little progress on projects. This fall I finally
talked SWMBO into letting me use half our two car garage for a shop, so
most of my effort right now is organizing and building some cabinets for
storage and general use. I'm almost finished with my lathe stand/tool
cabinet, and after that, I'll either build a wall mounted tool cabinet
or I'll start on a stand for my grinder and related tools.=0D
=0D
One of my motivations for building furniture is, we'd bought alot of
termite barf furniture over the years. Great for the short term (or
not!), but not so much if you ever actually use it and almost useless
if you ever disassemble and move it... I've never been particularly
happy with it. Building replacment furniture out of real wood is high
on my list.=0D
=0D
Like I mentioned above, I have a decent working set. At this point, I'm
looking for a few of the more specialized tools, like a good shoulder
plane, better (engineer) squares, and a good cutting gauge, among other
things. And maybe a low angle bench plane. I'm also on the lookout for
better chisels (I've got several sets of cheapies) and always keeping an
eye out for better versions of some of the tools I already have. And of
course, saving up for a Wenzloff saw, and maybe a few LN/Veritas items,
but those are more long term goals. Once the shop is cleaned up and
organized (and heated), I'm going to concentrate more on learning to
sharpen and set some of my saws and use the tools I do have.=0D
=0D
Dave Pearce=0D http://www.pearcewoodworking.com=0D


------------------------------------------------------------------------


Recent Bios FAQ