Welcome Ben,
                       Enjoy your seat.Being a new porch sitter you will 
find it is a pleasant and enjoyable place to converse, and share knowledge & 
experiences.
Kind Regards
Andrew J Hargreaves
rustycow
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Benjamin Mullin" 
To: "Oldtools" 
Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2006 5:55 PM
Subject: [OldTools] Bio

> After several weeks lurking I've decided to introduce myself to those on 
> the Porch.  I'm a 26 year old born and raised Minnesotan.  I have a great 
> wife of 3+ years that lets me take up the whole 3/4 car garage with my 
> "stuff".  We have one GIT, Dylan, who will be 2 in May.  Its hard to keep 
> him away from the tools.  Looks darn cute in his little tool belt filled 
> with plastic tools.  I can't wait to actually work with him.  We are 
> expecting our second GIT, sonographer is 99% sure it'll be Dalton, at the 
> end of April.
>
> I am an embedded software engineer working on medical devices by trade. 
> While getting the lights to blink and motors to spin is far better than 
> writing the next great banking-middleware-database-bore-me-to-death 
> software, when I get home at the end of the day I really want to DO 
> something.  I have any number of hobbies that I rotate through including 
> but not limited to:  woodworking, astronomy (including telescope making), 
> metal casting (still just collecting stuff and reading lots), metal 
> working, etc etc.
>
> I wouldn't say that I came from a long line of handy folks.  I guess my 
> Dad can be fairly handy when he wants to and does own a decent collection 
> of *l*ctr*n killers that I have used for most of my woodworking.  My 
> grandfather on my mothers side was definitely handy.  My mother tells me 
> that she was 20 something when she first realized that he couldn't fix 
> everything and I believe her.  He passed away a year and a half ago and we 
> miss him every day (even more when I'm digging through his tools and 
> wonder "what the heck is this?").
>
> In any case.  I'm a recent convert to galootism.  We haven't got the spare 
> fortune or the space (hey there will be four of us in this 2 bedroom town 
> home this spring) for a collection of tailed tools.  Besides, I usually 
> get gara... err shop time after everyone else is in bed.  I can't be 
> waking the whole block up.  To that end I recently purchased my first 
> plane (that 9 dollar block plane shaped thing from the local mega store 
> probably shouldn't count).  The owner of Beaumont's Quality Tool and I 
> pieced together a nice usable (with some cleaning and tuning) #5 (uh Jack 
> Plane, Jeff?).  It was a great experience purchasing a tool from a 
> knowledgeable sales person.  In the coming years I hope to build a good 
> set of users and the skills to use them to produce some quality heirloom 
> furniture for myself and my family.
>
> But enough about me.  I'm going to continue to lurk and learn and maybe 
> speak up with a question or two now and then.  And thanks to the list moms 
> for providing such a warm and hospitable place to talk old tools.
>
> Ben
>
> ps.  If anyone wants to share other good rust hunting locations in the 
> Twin Cities area with me I'm all ears.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> OldTools is a mailing list catering to the interests of hand tool
> aficionados, both collectors and users, to discuss the history, usage,
> value, location, availability, collectibility, and restoration of
> traditional handtools, especially woodworking tools.
>
> To read the FAQ:
> http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/archive/faq.html
>
> OldTools archive: http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/archive/
>
> OldTools@r...
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> 

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