I have been gone for a while and I am not sure if anyone will remember me but, I just want to tell everyone my story. Maybe others will get something from this but really this post is for me. With that said I will start from the beginning.
I am only 24 years old but I have had a love for woodworking since I was just a child. I remember watching The Woodwright's Shop and The New Yankee Workshop, when I was a child, and wishing that I could do all of those neat things that Norm Abram and Roy Underhill could do. I even remember one time while watching their shows with my dad, I told him that I was going to have a wood shop when I grew up!
So as time passed, I started to get into woodworking around the age of 12. I was at my friends house and we built a little night stand for my room. We did this with nothing more than a Stanly hammer, Craftsman screwdriver and a Skil circular saw that must have been 20 years old and weighed more than I did! It was a simple piece that was nothing more than two sides, a top and two shelves. The nightstand had a piece of cardboard that I cut out and nailed to the back like those inexpensive TV stands you buy at discount stores. Even though the nightstand was very basic and crude looking I was so proud of it.
By the time I was 15 a lot of my friends started to get cars. Being typical teenagers, they all wanted to have big sound systems in their cars. At that point I had been using woodworking tools for a few years I offered to make an enclosure for a friend's sub-woofers. He agreed so I went to work. It was only the second time I had ever worked with any kind of sheet goods and the first time I did anything with carpet. I did my homework and with the help of the internet I was able to make a well designed enclosure that looked good and sounded great in his car.
Once I turned 18 I had been making sub-woofer enclosures for most of my friends and many people from my high school. I started to get a reputation for car audio installs and even made some money doing it. With the money I earned from the car audio projects and my job at an Italian restaurant, I was able to buy some home audio stuff for my bedroom and get a nice little theater set up. I built all of the speakers and even one of the amplifiers. It was the first time I worked with veneer and it turned out really good! Once again, I was so proud of what I had made.
From the ages of 18 to 22 I had many different home audio configurations. I got my first house at the age of 20 made a really nice set of 5 speakers for my living room. I ended up selling them to a friend when I got into a tight spot and had some bills to pay. He showed them to many people and one of them ended up hiring me to do a full home theater in his home on Lake Norman.
I was a little nervous and not sure what to expect because I had never had a job of this size before. When I first went to vast him I was shocked at the size of his house. This place was huge! He lead me to the basement and it was empty, nothing but block walls and an unfinished ceiling. This was going to be a bigger job then I thought! We had dinner together and talked for a while about what he wanted and what ideas he had for his theater. By the end of the conversation he said "what would you want if you had no budget?" My eyes widened and I told him what I had always dreamed of doing. Once I finished telling him about all the little details that I had seen in my mind a million times he said "Let's do that then." I was shocked and excited to say the least! The cost for parts alone was going to be more money than I had ever seen in my life and he just hired me to do this job.
So with his first payment I went and bought a nice table saw and a few little tools to make the job easier. I worked for 70 to 80 hours a week for about 8 weeks until the job was finished. It was by far the best work I had ever done. I spent so much time on the design of the speakers and really put everything I had in it. Everything from the framing of the walls to the sound deadening of the stage/subwoofer enclosure was done to the best of my ability. The man was very happy with the finished product and invited many of his friends and neighbors over to see it.
I ended up getting a few jobs around Lake Norman because of him and made a good bit of money. I spent most of what I made on more tools and got a pretty nice home shop set up. At this point I had been working almost entirely with sheet goods and veneer but I wanted to branch out and start working with solid woods and do some of the things that I remember watching Norm and Roy do. So with my new tools and some wood I did a few projects and really enjoyed them. Most of them I gave to friends and family as gifts like most woodworkers seem to do. Every time I gave someone something I had made I had the familiar feeling of pride.
About a year or so ago, while looking on the internet for projects to do, I came across pen making. I was so amazed by some of the pens people have made and how beautiful they were! So I took a trip to the other side and picked up a lathe and a few pen kits at the local woodworking supply shop. That night I made my first pen and I was hooked! It was so simple and yet so fun! I would wake up and go to work then come home and make pens till it was time for bed. I even started to sell a few here and there to pay for my new found hobby. I was really enjoying pen making and was getting pretty good at it too. Pens make such good gifts and for as little as $8.00 you could make something that looked like it cost many times more than that. I thought I had finally found my niche.
Sadly around March or April of this year I started to have trouble breathing after I had worked in the garage, I mean wood shop. At first I had no idea that woodworking could be the cause of my trouble. I had been doing this for years and never had any sort of issues and almost always wore a face mask as I had asthma as a child and didn’t want to take any chances. I thought it was just a cold of some sort and tried over the counter medications to mask the symptoms. My nose would be stuffy; my eyes would be itchy, and worst of all I felt as if I couldn’t take a full breath. After about a week of feeling this way I decided that I need to see a doctor. I ended up going to the same doctor twice and he ran many different tests on me to see what it was that I had. He couldn’t find any type of virus and sent me to an allergy specialist. Once there he asked me a few questions and he suggested that I might be allergic to something in the woods I was working with. He sent me home and told me to make a list of all the woods I had been around in the week before I started having trouble. I send him the list and he orders a test kit to test for wood allergies. He tests me and I show no reaction to any of the things he tests me for. Once he saw that he was a little unsure as to what it might be and referred me to a respiratory specialist.
I ended up going to the respiratory specialist a few times and he never figured out what is wrong with me. He basically gave up trying to help and ended up saying that he just didn’t know what’s wrong with me and there was nothing he could do. I went to a different respiratory specialist, which was a woodworker himself, and got the same story. The best he could say was "Just stay away from the garage and stop woodworking."
I am only 24 years old but I have had a love for woodworking since I was just a child. I remember watching The Woodwright's Shop and The New Yankee Workshop, when I was a child, and wishing that I could do all of those neat things that Norm Abram and Roy Underhill could do. I even remember one time while watching their shows with my dad, I told him that I was going to have a wood shop when I grew up!
So as time passed, I started to get into woodworking around the age of 12. I was at my friends house and we built a little night stand for my room. We did this with nothing more than a Stanly hammer, Craftsman screwdriver and a Skil circular saw that must have been 20 years old and weighed more than I did! It was a simple piece that was nothing more than two sides, a top and two shelves. The nightstand had a piece of cardboard that I cut out and nailed to the back like those inexpensive TV stands you buy at discount stores. Even though the nightstand was very basic and crude looking I was so proud of it.
By the time I was 15 a lot of my friends started to get cars. Being typical teenagers, they all wanted to have big sound systems in their cars. At that point I had been using woodworking tools for a few years I offered to make an enclosure for a friend's sub-woofers. He agreed so I went to work. It was only the second time I had ever worked with any kind of sheet goods and the first time I did anything with carpet. I did my homework and with the help of the internet I was able to make a well designed enclosure that looked good and sounded great in his car.
Once I turned 18 I had been making sub-woofer enclosures for most of my friends and many people from my high school. I started to get a reputation for car audio installs and even made some money doing it. With the money I earned from the car audio projects and my job at an Italian restaurant, I was able to buy some home audio stuff for my bedroom and get a nice little theater set up. I built all of the speakers and even one of the amplifiers. It was the first time I worked with veneer and it turned out really good! Once again, I was so proud of what I had made.
From the ages of 18 to 22 I had many different home audio configurations. I got my first house at the age of 20 made a really nice set of 5 speakers for my living room. I ended up selling them to a friend when I got into a tight spot and had some bills to pay. He showed them to many people and one of them ended up hiring me to do a full home theater in his home on Lake Norman.
I was a little nervous and not sure what to expect because I had never had a job of this size before. When I first went to vast him I was shocked at the size of his house. This place was huge! He lead me to the basement and it was empty, nothing but block walls and an unfinished ceiling. This was going to be a bigger job then I thought! We had dinner together and talked for a while about what he wanted and what ideas he had for his theater. By the end of the conversation he said "what would you want if you had no budget?" My eyes widened and I told him what I had always dreamed of doing. Once I finished telling him about all the little details that I had seen in my mind a million times he said "Let's do that then." I was shocked and excited to say the least! The cost for parts alone was going to be more money than I had ever seen in my life and he just hired me to do this job.
So with his first payment I went and bought a nice table saw and a few little tools to make the job easier. I worked for 70 to 80 hours a week for about 8 weeks until the job was finished. It was by far the best work I had ever done. I spent so much time on the design of the speakers and really put everything I had in it. Everything from the framing of the walls to the sound deadening of the stage/subwoofer enclosure was done to the best of my ability. The man was very happy with the finished product and invited many of his friends and neighbors over to see it.
I ended up getting a few jobs around Lake Norman because of him and made a good bit of money. I spent most of what I made on more tools and got a pretty nice home shop set up. At this point I had been working almost entirely with sheet goods and veneer but I wanted to branch out and start working with solid woods and do some of the things that I remember watching Norm and Roy do. So with my new tools and some wood I did a few projects and really enjoyed them. Most of them I gave to friends and family as gifts like most woodworkers seem to do. Every time I gave someone something I had made I had the familiar feeling of pride.
About a year or so ago, while looking on the internet for projects to do, I came across pen making. I was so amazed by some of the pens people have made and how beautiful they were! So I took a trip to the other side and picked up a lathe and a few pen kits at the local woodworking supply shop. That night I made my first pen and I was hooked! It was so simple and yet so fun! I would wake up and go to work then come home and make pens till it was time for bed. I even started to sell a few here and there to pay for my new found hobby. I was really enjoying pen making and was getting pretty good at it too. Pens make such good gifts and for as little as $8.00 you could make something that looked like it cost many times more than that. I thought I had finally found my niche.
Sadly around March or April of this year I started to have trouble breathing after I had worked in the garage, I mean wood shop. At first I had no idea that woodworking could be the cause of my trouble. I had been doing this for years and never had any sort of issues and almost always wore a face mask as I had asthma as a child and didn’t want to take any chances. I thought it was just a cold of some sort and tried over the counter medications to mask the symptoms. My nose would be stuffy; my eyes would be itchy, and worst of all I felt as if I couldn’t take a full breath. After about a week of feeling this way I decided that I need to see a doctor. I ended up going to the same doctor twice and he ran many different tests on me to see what it was that I had. He couldn’t find any type of virus and sent me to an allergy specialist. Once there he asked me a few questions and he suggested that I might be allergic to something in the woods I was working with. He sent me home and told me to make a list of all the woods I had been around in the week before I started having trouble. I send him the list and he orders a test kit to test for wood allergies. He tests me and I show no reaction to any of the things he tests me for. Once he saw that he was a little unsure as to what it might be and referred me to a respiratory specialist.
I ended up going to the respiratory specialist a few times and he never figured out what is wrong with me. He basically gave up trying to help and ended up saying that he just didn’t know what’s wrong with me and there was nothing he could do. I went to a different respiratory specialist, which was a woodworker himself, and got the same story. The best he could say was "Just stay away from the garage and stop woodworking."
