Hey all! As the title says, I'm a new member; I just joined yesterday under the advisement of a coworker.
A little about me.... there are two smells from my childhood that I will never ever forget: my dad's kiwi polish for his black combat boots and the smell of my grandfather's woodworking shop. Maybe it's a little more than ironic that I'm now a veteran and have been very slowly improving my carpentry skills. First got into it remodeling a small house for family in 2006, and I never looked back.
Over the years, I feel I've steadily gotten better, especially as my tool inventory and experience and my shop space improved. I've always had a mind for engineering and a desire to design and build, which has helped me greatly improve in my CAD skills as they apply to woodworking.
Whipping something functional together has always come easily, but the finer details (nice, tight joints, invisible but strong glue lines, consistency in my cuts, etc) has and will always take a bit more effort (and patience) for me to improve on. So I've found that's been more of a focus for me lately.
Recently, under pressure from friends and family to do so, I started taking steps to get a side business/company going. Life, as usual, has made it slow going, but I'm hoping to accelerate things in the next 6 to 9 months and go almost full time, or at least taking up the majority of my free time. My last project (and biggest commission to date) was an 8' x 3' farmhouse dining table and bench using castle joints (THAT was a learning experience!). Current project is a sofa table with a live edge white oak top and SYP base.
I've already browsed several threads, and I'm blown away by the quality of the pieces I've seen (e.g. the workbenches that are "too pretty to be used") and the incredible knowledge and experience on this forum. I'm super excited to take full advantage of this amazing community. I'm even planning to visit the extravaganza in October!
That's enough of a book for an intro, so I'll leave it there for now. I'll attach some of the pieces that I'm more proud of just to contribute. Thanks in advance for all I'm going to learn from you all!
A little about me.... there are two smells from my childhood that I will never ever forget: my dad's kiwi polish for his black combat boots and the smell of my grandfather's woodworking shop. Maybe it's a little more than ironic that I'm now a veteran and have been very slowly improving my carpentry skills. First got into it remodeling a small house for family in 2006, and I never looked back.
Over the years, I feel I've steadily gotten better, especially as my tool inventory and experience and my shop space improved. I've always had a mind for engineering and a desire to design and build, which has helped me greatly improve in my CAD skills as they apply to woodworking.
Whipping something functional together has always come easily, but the finer details (nice, tight joints, invisible but strong glue lines, consistency in my cuts, etc) has and will always take a bit more effort (and patience) for me to improve on. So I've found that's been more of a focus for me lately.
Recently, under pressure from friends and family to do so, I started taking steps to get a side business/company going. Life, as usual, has made it slow going, but I'm hoping to accelerate things in the next 6 to 9 months and go almost full time, or at least taking up the majority of my free time. My last project (and biggest commission to date) was an 8' x 3' farmhouse dining table and bench using castle joints (THAT was a learning experience!). Current project is a sofa table with a live edge white oak top and SYP base.
I've already browsed several threads, and I'm blown away by the quality of the pieces I've seen (e.g. the workbenches that are "too pretty to be used") and the incredible knowledge and experience on this forum. I'm super excited to take full advantage of this amazing community. I'm even planning to visit the extravaganza in October!
That's enough of a book for an intro, so I'll leave it there for now. I'll attach some of the pieces that I'm more proud of just to contribute. Thanks in advance for all I'm going to learn from you all!
