Moses finally presents the bio.

Born in Wooster, Ohio, 1967. My parents were Amish. We lived close to Apple 
Creek if my memory serves me right. My grandfather was a buggy maker, no 
longer with us.  We moved to Indiana when I was two years old, and my 
parents bought a car. My dad built a house for us a little south of 
Middlebury, IN, some of my first memories of working with wood occured 
there. I can still remember some of the shelves we built for friends and 
relatives, and I remember sanding my dads tool box to get it ready for the 
ugliest gray paint you ever saw, and he still has it today.  We would set 
up the old table saw in the kitchen and cut away, with the my dad yelling 
at us because we wouldn't support the ends steady enough for him and he'd 
end up pinching the blade and stalling the saw. I graduated Northridge high 
school in 1986. My parents were Mennonites by then, and my dad informed us 
that college was only for heathens,  so after high school I went looking 
for a job. I rather enjoyed woodworking classes in high school, and I 
started working in a local cabinet refacing factory in 1986. They let us 
use the tools for our own projects after hours, so I started building 
stuff, some of it nice enough to get the owners attention. I was soon 
building all of their custom cabinets, and remained in that position for 
about ten years, parting ways with the company after becoming shop foreman 
and trying that out for about a year before deciding the headaches of 
people management were not for me. I began work at Riegsecker Hardwoods in 
1997, building some decent furniture, ended up becoming foreman there after 
a few months, once again lasting about a year. I started my own wood shop 
in the fall of 1998, with most of the business I had coming from my former 
employer. I built unfinished cabinet boxes for them, not very challenging 
in the way of woodwork but still allowing me to play with blocks.  I also 
installed kitchens, and did some nice custom work locally.  Over the next 
two years I slowly figured out that business is just not my gig. I'm not 
extremely skilled as a craftsman, but that is my niche; a woodworking 
craftsman is the job for me. I am currently at work in Shipshewana once 
again, building prototype furniture, along with fixing a lot of mistakes 
made on furniture and whatever else needs doing. The few years in business 
taught me a lot about myself, and I wouldn't trade that for the world. I'm 
working on becoming better organized now, and learning to manage my time 
and finances better.

	I have been interested in hand tools for a long time, but only after 
getting on the web was I able to learn some of the skills involved in 
making a hand plane functional, and it has been downhill since then. I now 
have more planes than I know, although most are still rusty and need 
reviving. I have a decent brace and bits, saws that need sharpening, 
molding planes, scrapers, about the only thing I'm really still wanting is 
a nice little open handle dovetail saw. I also have the complete set of 
p*w*r t**ls, which I still use to earn some money. My shop is 24 x 28, 
looking similar to a garage but we all know   it would rather be a wood 
shop. A few months back I tackled dovetails by hand, and am now ready to 
take on the world ;)

	I married the worlds greatest lady (no offense to Esther and others on the 
list, I think I'm prejudiced) Megan, in 1990, and we now have an eight year 
old, Mary, and four year old, Miranda. We live in White Pigeon, MI, with 
five dogs, a rabbit, a cat, and a horse that we board at a farm a few miles 
away.  Megan has learned to at least pretend interest in woodworking and no 
longer threatens the loss of my tools when I track sawdust into the house. 
Her interests are needlework, such as tatting, and animals. She is a full 
time mom, home schooling our girls. The girls love to glue scraps together, 
and are still young enough that they claim they want to be woodworkers when 
they grow up.

	So there it is, my entire life contained in a few short paragraphs. My 
woodworking goals are to develope my hand tool usage, and build some pieces 
for display in shows in the larger cities around this area such as Chicago 
and Detroit, and to never stop learning.

	Thanks for putting up with me.

	Moses Yoder
	12140 Riverside Dr.
	White Pigeon, MI 49099