OldTools Archive

Recent Bios FAQ

84522 "Michael C. Recchione" recchione@i... 2000‑10‑03 Belated Bio (Pond Scum)
I've been lurking/participating on the Porch for almost a year now, but
never got around to posting a Bio - mostly because, at least from a
woodworking point of view, my life has been pretty boring.
I've been experiencing increasing guilt with each bio post that I see,
and the recent "pond scum" references have finally overcome my natural
laziness.  It also didn't hurt that more FS posts are insisting on a
posted bio on file as a requirement for OldTools terms :-) So here goes:

In the vital statistics department, I'm exactly middle-aged if I live to
be nearly 96, married for 19 years and have two sons, 6
and 2 1/2.  My background is in electrical engineering, but several
years ago I went over to the dark side and have been doing technical
management.  During the day I lead a core technology group that does
forward-looking work in speech and audio processing for Lucent
Technologies' Wireless Networks Group.  (If anybody is wondering,
forward looking work is right in between basic research and product
development, sometimes closer to one, sometimes to the other, always
held in contempt by both.)  

My early exposure to woodworking came from my grandfather and my uncle. 
Both had gone through full apprenticeships as cabinetmakers in Italy,
and my grandfather had also completed an additional two years of
training in carving and design.  He lived with us, and his tools were
stored in two carpenter's chests down in the basement.  These
were always magic places for me - I loved the look of the tools, the
smell of the metal and oil, the sawdust and wood.  I wish I could
say I'd learned all the intricacies of joinery from him, but I didn't
learn much of anything at all.  He always planned that I would go to
college and become a "professional", and he never understood the concept
of hobbies - the idea of me doing for fun what he broke his back to do
for a living so I would never have to wouldn't have occurred to him.  

I lived in a small 4-th floor walk-up apartment in NYC until 12 years
ago, but I always had a sort of ersatz workbench set up. I built a bunch
of our simpler furniture, mostly using hand tools, applying the cut big,
file to fit, change the design to accomodate mistakes paradigm. (Come to
think of it, not a bad paradigm at all...)  I always dreamed of having a
real workshop (== lots of p*w*r tools) once I got a house, but for one
reason or another, that never happened - mostly lack of space because
the basement and garage were our main storage areas and there just
wasn't anyplace else. I had inherited one box of my grandfather's tools,
but it mostly just sat unopened in a corner.  

Then came Hurricane Floyd last fall.  Our basement took on about 4 feet
of water and suddenly the "storage room" contender for space (which had
become the dominant one after 13 years in the house), went away!  Along
with more or less everything that had been stored down there, of course.
Now I had space.  Unfortunately, one of the casualties was my
grandfather's box of tools.  I couldn't accept this, so, after finishing
up the cleanup required by considerations of health and SWMBO, I started
to fish rusty hunks of metal out of it one by one and restore them to
working order.  I didn't even know what some of these things were
supposed to do - I'd never seen my grandfather use them during his
retirement.  I guess there isn't much need for a Union No 60 cabinet
scraper in the home improvement arena.  The galoot resources I found on
the web were enormously helpful, especially the Porch archives and
Electronic Neanderthal.  I don't consider myself a collector, but I do
believe I am the custodian of some pieces of history that have a great
deal of personal meaning for me.

The tools kind of awoke my sleeping woodworking obsession, and in the
last year I've set up a shop in the basement (one flood in 75 years -
what are the odds it'll happen again?  Still, everything that isn't
real high up is easy to grab.), built a bunch of things including my
bench, a whole lot of shop stuff, some simple tools including a pretty
neat bowsaw, a couple of jewelry boxes, some larger pieces, some
carvings and I'm currently in the middle of my most ambitious project to
date, a 6-drawer Mission-Style dresser in Cherry.  

I do all of my work using hand tools, most of them antiques. In
addition to getting the rest of my grandfather's tools, I inherited all
my uncle's tools and I've also been pretty active in the flea
market/garage sale/eBay departments, so my "set of users" is growing at
a truly frightening rate.  I've fully adopted the policy of
backup without proceeding to full-scale collecting.  This is a hobby for
me and I have no agenda about it.  I don't consider myself a Priest of
the Church of Neander, or a custodian of the sacred arts of Ye Olde Tyme
Joyner.  I just mess around in my shop and have fun.  I own a couple of
low-end hand-held p*w*r tools, but don't use them because of the noise
and dust and the fact that I have to do most of my work between 11PM and
2AM when the rest of the family's asleep.  I don't own any machines
because I simply don't have space for them.  And I _enjoy_ preparing
stock by hand - it's about the only exercise I get nowadays.

In addition to woodworking, I am a semi-pro musician (i.e. I get payed
to play, but don't make my living at it.)  I play mostly keyboards, but
have done stints as a guitarist and worked for 5 years as a bass player
in a jazz quartet.  I used to be an avid cyclist (have a pretty neat
Bianchi and also a carbon-fiber Specialized Epic that is lighter than
air and almost qualifies as an old tool by now) and hope to get back
into it as soon as my youngest son gets a little less demanding on my
time.  My claim to fame was that I used to commute the 52 miles
round-trip to work on my bicycle fairly regularly.

Wow, for a boring bio, I sure let this get long!  Hope I didn't put
anyone to sleep (unless they wanted to be asleep :-))

- Mike (Newly Redeemed Pond Scum)



Recent Bios FAQ