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Recent Bios FAQ

149597 "Gary Maze" <egsmaze@s...> 2005‑09‑09 Bio: Gary Maze
I started out down the path with a Grandpa that was a carpenter, and
over the protests of Grandma let myself and my siblings pound nails,
drill holes with his brace and bits, create shavings with an old dull
block plane and just generally play around and become familiar with
woodworking tools (this was laughingly referred to as “dirty work”).
Unfortunately he died when I was 13 and my dad was not interested in
letting me work with what few tools he had, so I pretty much lost what
little knowledge I had gained from my younger days. I became fascinated
when New Yankee Workshop first came on and thought, “I can do that”, but
didn’t do anything other than watch, until my dad bought an old Sears
jointer and bandsaw, realized he had no room for them in his garage and
told me I could keep them until they got a different house. That was the
start down the wrong path, which I got pretty far along until I realized
that maybe dragging cords behind me in the shop was not the only way of
doing things. I learned a lot, made some pretty cool pieces for friends,
family and myself and collected a whole shop of power tools. During this
time, I had become intrigued by hand planes and had purchased a few at
auctions but was disappointed when I couldn’t seem to get them to work
right, so I would put them in a cabinet and drag them out once in a
while to see if the plane fairies had magically tuned them, but alas,
they always seemed to pass my shop without stopping.

  Being a history buff, I had read Tedd Bensons “The Timber Framed
  House” and was looking for some way of getting hands on training other
  than traveling to Vermont, when SWMBO spotted a class about
  timberframing at a local museum (Conner Prairie is just north of
  Indianapolis, and is a living history museum with an 1836 town and an
  1886 town with great classes and very knowledgeable interpreters,
  www.connerprairie.org). I took that one and the teachers suggested if
  I was interested in old tools to take a class based on Michael
  Dunbar’s book “Restoring, Tuning and Using Old Tools”. The class
  actually ended up being myself and 2 old ladies that were trying to
  find out the value of their fathers tools, so I didn’t learn as much
  as I wanted, but I did learn that antique tools were much cheaper than
  power tools and a lot more fun if you knew how to set them up. Plus
  the instructor told me about an auction down the street from my work
  that was taking place that weekend. A Martin Donnelly auction is not
  the place to buy bottom feeding user tools, but the trading in the
  parking lot is lots of fun and you can get a boatload of free advice
  and information, and the occasional deal. SWMBO now cringes when we go
  to Cracker Barrel or any other “country” type restaurant and I start
  harping about how the owners should be strung up for screwing an old
  but still quite useable tool to the wall. Soon I was hooked on Ebay,
  auctions, flea markets and garage sales and had reacquainted myself
  with Saint Roy (I actually got to meet him last year and got a picture
  of Roy, myself and SWMBOette wearing the Papal Mitre [his hat that he
  wears on every show]), then learned the scary sharp(tm) system from an
  article in FWW, and settled down with a couple of pieces of glass and
  lots of sandpaper to sharpen every edged tool I owned (the saws are
  patiently waiting for me to get brave enough to sharpen them).

July 2004, I finally gave the blood sacrifice the hand tools had been
demanding from me when I sliced the web between my left thumb and
forefinger with a scary sharp chisel (don’t hold the work piece while
you are trying to clean out a dovetail, DAMHIKT). Being the squeamish
kind about my own blood, I’m not sure how many stitches I got, but the
doctor did not believe that I had done it with a chisel. He said the cut
was cleaner than any other woodworking accident he had ever seen and the
chisel was so sharp, that I would not even get a scar out of it :-( It
was also good training for SWMBOette, since mommy wasn’t home and daddy
made sure she knew how to dial 911 in case he “fell asleep” waiting for
mommy to get home and take me to the ER.

The slope seems to have gotten progressively steeper since then, and I
have now done several small projects completely by hand, and use the
tailed apprentices less and less. Nothing like watching New Yankee
workshop and trying to figure out how to do the stuff Norm does only
with my hand tools.

I have a wife, who has become pretty long-suffering of her husbands tool
obsess... no, collec… no, investments, yeah, that’s it, along with a 7
year old SWMBOette who was demoted last year from GITette for committing
heresy by suggesting daddy get rid of his tools since he keeps getting
hurt with them. Before that I thought she was well on her way to
galoothood when she asked for tools last year for Christmas and after
Santa delivered a nice for real tool set from Home Depot, she
immediately injured herself by retracting the tape measure and cutting
her finger with the tape. We and all of the tools live in Greenwood,
Indiana, just South of Indianapolis (former home of EC Atkins, for all
of you non-Disston fans).

29 planes, 12 saws, 2 drawers of files, 5 braces, 15 chisels and
counting….

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Recent Bios FAQ