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Thread: Your earliest woodworking experience?

  1. #1
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    Your earliest woodworking experience?

    OK - my dad just got a new scanner and sent me this. Apparently, I started woodworking much earlier than I was aware of and apparently took it as seriously then as I do now. This was taken on Christmas day in either 1958 or 1959 when I was about 4 years old. Just what every woodworker worth his salt needs (a bathrobe, pistol strapped to the hip, and a cowboy hat to go with all those woodworking tools) . This was amusing and I just wanted to share with the group. This isn't OT since it is related to woodworking but, could easily go in the Neander group.

    So - what are your earliest woodworking experiences? Pictures would be most helpful.

    Steves woodworking - the early years.jpg

  2. #2
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    Steve, My pop was a framer in Michigan and I always wanted to go to work with him as a young kid. So one weekend day when I was 9 he took me to one of his side jobs were he was framing a house and said, "see all those small pieces of wood laying around, pick them up and make a pile". Not sure what happened but I was hooked. I remember .50 an hour and after 8 hours of cleaning up and being a gopher I was hooked and very tired. I will never forget the scream of that Skill saw. Every weekend after that, summers and holidays I worked with pops on his side jobs til I was 18, yup pops worked 7 days a week most of the time. When I graduated HS then it was full time framing homes til I moved from Michigan...

  3. #3
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    My father was born in 44, and they used to sell "kids" tool kits that had misc real woodworking equipment, He still has and uses his coping saw, and his block plane.

    When I was a kid, we were dropped off in the toy section, while our parents finished shopping in the store. (toys were the babysitter, you could look touch buttons, but NOT open anything). Well, I hear it every couple of years, about how when they were ready to leave (mom and her best friend), they took away a plastic chainsaw. And the infamous, I want my saw, event happened.

    Mom's best friend offered to buy me that saw if they would take me back just to shut me up, HOURS later.
    Wasn't till middle school, that I really got to use power tools. Dad wasn't allowed to keep hardly any, and we weren't allowed to touch hardly anything that we could get hurt on.

  4. #4
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    My grandfather put an old hand plane in my hands when I was about 7. He needed me to get out of his hair so he could get something done! Told me to fill a bucket with 'pine curliques.' Took me all day and one or two inbetween 'lessons' but I got it done. Then he took the bucket full into my grandmother for fire starters for her wood cook stove.

    Success and affirmation on my first 'project' and I was hooked. Never looked at a doll again!
    Carol in NV

  5. #5
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    I unfortunately can't account for any "early" woodworking experiences, for the most part, as I didn't take it up until I was about 40. I did help my dad build a small horse barn when I was a pre-teen, but I'm not sure how much "woodworking" I actually did on that. Pre-woodworking, I was doing my own home-improvement at my previous residence and that gravitated into what is now my "mental health" avocation. My first projects included a plant stand, some speakers and a sign for a new synagogue, a couple Adirondack chairs a la NYW and the cherry desk Professor Dr. SWMBO uses in her home office.
    --

    The most expensive tool is the one you buy "cheaply" and often...

  6. #6
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    My father started me out very young. He was a master craftsman and a jack of all trades. There was nothing in the way of working with his hands he just couldn't do. Anyway, at a very young age I had access to tools, including power tools. At about 8 I made my mom a toothpick holder on an old lathe, for a Christmas present. My brothers and I built toy guns, swords, knives, go cart out of a 2 X 12... We had a great life as kids, lived in the country so my dad could "keep his boys busy". Unfortunately, I didn't inherit the talent he possessed.

  7. #7
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    1st or 2nd grade we made a little tugboat. A couple of pieces of wood nailed together, a dowel for the smokestack, and painted red. My first official project.

    Actual woodworking started in the 7th grade.I took woodshop all through junior highschool, grades 7,8&9. Then in high school I did Vo-Tech type stuff at a furniture making shop during high School.

  8. #8
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    I must have been about 4 years old and I found a hachet and picked it up and tried it on one of the door jambs in our home in NY....well when my Father found it....he didn't hit me...instead he explained a little about tools and how you use them. Then whenever he was working on something , I was right there at his side....as I grew a little older ...my skills improved and if he would reach a point where he was stuck and had to get another tool to continue....I would always try to impress him by solving whatever the problem was by the time he returned...then he would say.."Mark , how did you do that? Ruthy (my Mother's name was Ruth) the kid is a genius!" You know that kind of support from a Dad is so valuable when your growing up....

    Had my Dad scolded me severly for the door jamb I ruined it may have changed my life comletely...I may not have been interested in helping him again...or building things ....or becoming an Architect! So be supportive of your kids and know the damage you do to them may be much worse then a pine door jamb!
    Last edited by Mark Singer; 02-11-2007 at 11:25 PM.
    "All great work starts with love .... then it is no longer work"

  9. #9

    Christmas Day

    Christmas of 1970 (I was 4 1/2 years old), my parents gave me a kids tool set with a hammer, saw, screwdriver and tape measure. Kids tools back then were metal clones of the real thing. That morning I sawed the arm off our couch. A few days later I used the hammer and screwdriver to chisel chunks out of the new picnic table and benches my dad had just built. Woodworking has been in my blood ever since.

  10. #10
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    I remember

    Around 1968 I made a set of built in speakers for my first stereo. I used a set of existing built in cabinets, Lower left and right cubbies. I removed the cubby doors and built a set of frames with acoustic cloth to cover the openings with a wedge fit into the cubbies. The speakers and crossover were mounted on a piece of plywood that screwed into the cubby openings. I think I used pine for the frames. All I had to work with were some quite old hand tools left to my mom when her dad died years earlier. They were all rusted and dull, but somehow I managed. That's what started the ember. My next project was not for another 12 years when as a young married guy, we needed some free standing cabinets and the toll purchases began. It's grown like a snowball since then.

  11. #11
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    My first experience was with my grandfather. I was 6. He was building a cedar chest. I can remember having a ball with him. He then let me build a small box with a hinged lid. My mom had it and when she died I could not find it anywhere in the house. Don't know what happened to it.
    Bernie

    Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.

    To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funnybone.



  12. #12
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    Like they say "top this". My woodworking experience started in 1944 at 12 years old working in my Grandfather's wagon maker and patternmaker shop. I was basically the shop gofer but I sure did learn a lot.
    Last edited by Ken Salisbury; 02-11-2007 at 12:05 PM.
    "If you believe in yourself and have dedication and pride - and never quit, you'll be a winner. The price of victory is high - but so are the rewards" - - Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant
    Ken Salisbury Passed away on May 1st, 2008 and will forever be in our hearts.

  13. #13

    Submarine

    Most likely made stuff earlyer but I remember turning a 18" model of a fast attack submarine for a contest Electric Boat in Groton, CT had. It was the 585 Skipjack. I turned the main body then added the tower, stabalizers and prop.

    I won some tickets to the 1965 Worlds Fair in NY.

    Funny, some 20 some years later I worked on the real 585 when it was in for refueling at Electric Boat.

  14. #14
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    No pics but like most kids I was set to driving nails into a piece of scrap to keep me busy while dad worked.
    "A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg".


    – Samuel Butler

  15. #15
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    I looked like the kid in the photo but for a different reason.....I was about age 6 at the time....one of my sister's was about 18 months old. She was standing inside a multi-paned storm door...teasing me...I lost my temper and struck the pane of glass with my hand trying to hit her....slashing my wrist...My mother 8 months pregnant with my younger brother chased me around the yard but couldn't catch me. As I passed the gate, I managed open it and get out into the street. Luckily for me a neighbor lady standing by a kitchen window saw our predicament and ran into the street and caught me. After a visit to the ER and many stitches I refused to use that hand. Dad was still building yard toys for us kids, so he bought me set of tools so I could help him construct the swingset, teeter/totter, etc.
    Last edited by Ken Fitzgerald; 02-11-2007 at 2:46 PM.
    Ken

    So much to learn, so little time.....

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