welcome Mike!
Jason
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Lietzow"
To: "oldtools"
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 8:13 PM
Subject: [oldtools] bio
> Greetings esteemed and gentle Galoots,
>
> I've procrastinated posting my bio long enough so here it is. Since
> talking about me is one of my favorite topics, I suspect this post will be
> ridiculously long and a potent cure for insomnia before it's finished.
>
> My desire to make things from wood started a long time before I ever even
> considered the term woodworker. Growing up on a small farm, my brother
> and I spent many hours in the local woods building forts and tree houses
> from whatever pieces of wood we could gather from the forest floor or chop
> down with a hatchet. The first project I set out to build from real
> lumber was a simple set of stairs for the side door of my Mom's garage.
> Nothing complicated, just three steps to replace the cinderblock we used
> to get in and out of the garage. I soon learned that building things
> takes patience and planning and, although I didn't realize it at the time,
> I now appreciate the utility of the geometry and trigonometry classes that
> I gave about 10% effort in when I took them in high school. The stairs
> ended up being kind of ugly and required some shimming under the base to
> make them level but, all-in-all, it proved to be a huge improvement from
> the cinderblock step it replaced and gave me some sense of accomplishment.
>
> For the next 20 or so years, every project I took on was sort of based on
> this utilitarian aspect; mostly shelves for this or that. During that
> time, I slowly developed an appreciation for fine craftsmanship and
> somewhere in the back of my mind I always new that someday I'd set up a
> shop for all kinds of projects. My original vision of a dream shop came
> from Roy Underhill's Woodwrights Shop program on PBS. I absolutely loved
> that show from the first time I saw it, especially the beginning of the
> show when he walked out to his rustic shop and slid that big door open. A
> lot of time has passed since those initial ideas for a shop and there's a
> world of difference between the rural area of Ohio where I first started
> dreaming and the Southern California planned community I find myself in
> now. So, my dream shop has been modified slightly but the goal is still
> the same; to have an area suitable for projects but also a place where I
> can simply escape and ponder life's mysteries while accomplishing nothing
> of measure.
>
> My start down the slope started like many others'. At first I wanted a
> shop full of the biggest and bestest wood-shredding machines available,
> but I had neither the space nor the funds for that. I don't remember what
> the impetus was, but for some reason I decided to hit some garage sales
> one Saturday to look for used tools. I guess you could call it beginner's
> luck as I did pretty well that day bringing home an 8" sweep Millers Falls
> bit brace and a Type 15 Bailey #4 (iron smooth plane, Jeff)). That
> afternoon, I sat in my gar..err...shop admiring the tools and
> contemplating where they'd been and what they'd built. There was no doubt
> about it; I was hooked. That was a little over a year ago and, thanks to
> TSGFH, ;^> I've managed to accumulate a nice assortment of tools of all
> manner and even use some of them. I've made a lot of progress builing a
> reasonble facsimile of a real woodworking bench and hope to be dazzling
> LOML in the not-to-distant future with fine, hand-crafted trinkets.
>
> I spend my weekdays as a biochemist working on esoteric problems that
> don't have a whole lot to do with biochemistry, per se. In my spare time
> (what spare time?), I accumulate old tools (surprise!), spend lots of time
> doing yard work/landscaping, occasionally dabble in old tool usage, and
> surf as much as possible (preferably in the ocean rather than on the net).
> I love to hike and camp and climb rocks and trees and all of that Huck
> Finn kinda stuff but don't seem to get 'round to it anymore. But my shop
> is coming along and there is a peace found there that is a rare treasure
> nowadays.
>
> Finally, I am grateful that I stumbled onto the Porch that fateful day
> about a year or so ago. I didn't know diddly about old tools, or
> woodworking for that matter, but was welcomed nonetheless. I don't
> suppose I need to go on about this since you all know what I'm talking
> about but I want to say "thank you all" for providing such a warm and
> thought-provoking place to put down my rocking chair and sit a spell.
> It's been a pleasure.
>
> Best regards,
> Mike Lietzow, Carlsbad, CA
>
> Archive: http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/archive/
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