OldTools Archive

Recent Bios FAQ

13583 SBMarcus <sbmarcus@l...> 1997‑02‑14 My bio
I gather that the drill around here is to introduce yourself before you
start adding your two bits (I  didn't read anything in the FAQ about puns
but I'll try not to make a habit of it), and I wasn't planning to quite so
soon. What with winter and then blackfly season,  hanging around on a porch
is not something you look forward to doing much before July in Maine. But I
keep getting the itch to join some of the threads, so I'd better get to it.

I live in a small town, Alna, in what we affectionately refer to around
here as south-central-coastal Maine. I moved here about twenty-five years
ago from an apartment building in NY that had a larger population than does
Alna. I moved here, in part, because it was time to try to make a living as
a woodworker and NY was not the place, for me at least, to attempt that.
I'm still trying.

I've been doing woodwork since I was seven, a lot of years ago (Lets just
say that I remember getting our first TV to watch the Army-McCarthy
hearings). My father wanted me to be a surgeon and thought leaving me alone
with a bunch of tools would give me confidence in my manual dexterity. He
was right! It did! But, as someone who gags at the cracking of an egg, I
decided, much to his dismay, to fall in love with cutting wood rather than
flesh. 

So, I've had a shop for twenty-five years and have managed to successfully
remain just above the income level that would have qualified my family for
food stamps until recently.
Like every professional I've ever met I have had to compromise my love for
hand tools more than I would have wished, but I limit my use of them to
only those operations that really make a difference in turning out work
expeditiously. About half my work is antique restoration. Almost the only
time I use power for that is at my lathe (though I've owned and used
several tredlers), and at my three bandsaws, to roughcut stock. I own the
dreaded Ryobi 3000 table saw which I use about twice a year, a lousy sears
drill press, an minimax combo jointer/planer and two lathes, one for metal
turning.  I once made 135 chairs for a restaurant. Believe me, I used my
power tools.

I am much more involved with my hand tools. I own all the usual Stanley
bench planes and several dozen of the special purpose planes. At last count
I owned about 150 wooden planes, very few of them profile molders. As a
card-carrying country woodworker I make all my moldings with hollows and
rounds and a Stanley 92 (probably my favorite, or is that my ebony
smoother, or my Ulmia scrub, or any of the dozen planes made by my friend
Leon Robbins under the sign of the Crown in Bath, Maine). I own a very
satisfying, pre-war set of  Addis carving chisels; another set, probably
19th cent, which grow in my affection every time I use them.  I make ten to
twenty pieces of furniture a year, mostly in traditional styles (this is
Maine, after all), but not always. I just finished, for instance, a table
and 8 chairs in a style that one waggish friend described as Queen Anne
meets Art Nouveau meets soft-core porn, all done by hand except
thicknessing the stock and roughcutting the shapes of the members.

I also deal in tools in a small way, as well as other antiques, selling
locally and doing a few shows a year, tools mostly at Brimfield and to my
students  and ex-students (I usually have 1 or 2). My best moment in that
line was finding 17 Jo. Fullers in a barn an 1/8 of a mile down the road.
Needless to say I couldn't afford to keep them. I'd much rather find a good
user tool at a price that I can afford to resell cheaply to someone who
will use it than a winner that's going to end up sitting on display shelves
for the rest of time because its too precious to ever do again what it was
intended to do. (But if you know where I can find some more Jo. Fullers at
a reasonable price let me know).

Bruce Marcus



Recent Bios FAQ