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Recent Bios FAQ

156163 Greg Tucker <gstucker@v...> 2006‑01‑27 Member Bio
Hello All -

First off, thanks for the interesting discussions. I've been lurking 
about for several months and haven't been able to resist popping up 
with a couple questions/comments, so I figured it was high time to post 
this bio.

I grew up in a family with a DIY outlook. My father was a factory 
mechanic. If it wasn't skilled labor, we did it; in fact, I think the 
only professionals my folks have ever hired were a plumber (once), an 
A/C installer, and a floor refinisher. The next year, I was snagged to 
refinish the remaining floor.

In college I joined the art school and quickly decided to major in 
graphic design, thinking I would prefer the security of a job. But I 
put more passion into the fine art classes I elected, especially wood 
design. This was the early '80s, the days when FWW was still 
influential in the world where craft, fine art and design overlap. I 
was a couple of classes away from a wood major but couldn't see trying 
to make it a viable career. So I stayed with the graphics for no real 
reason and bounced around several jobs in the field, paying the bills 
with bartending on the side. I worked the lobby bar of a snooty hotel 
with a nice pianist; nice enough that I married her. Eventually I 
realized I needed to find a real and satisfying career, so I decided to 
try flying. I sold my '48 Chevy coupe and '58 Thunderbird to help 
finance the painful training expenses. Then: a year training, move to 
FL, five years flight instructing during a very dead job market, move 
to TX, five years at a feeder airline, major airline job in 2001, laid 
off Nov. of that year, back to the feeder for three years, and back on 
with the major for the past year, with fingers crossed for the state of 
the industry.

Somewhere in there we moved to RI, where we ended up in a very small 
condo group where most of the buildings were historic homes from the 
early- to late-1800s, each split into two units. We had about 900 
square feet in a millhouse from 1885, but --- we got most of the 
basement! Shop space at last, even if the headroom was only six feet. 
While I scrounged for power tool deals, I picked up my first Bailey 
pattern planes and (sort of) figured out their use while prepping the 
maple I used in making the workbench described in Tage Frid's book. I 
wasn't confident enough to change anything other than reversing 
everything for left-handed use. It's a nice (little) bench and I got 
loads of aerobic exercise jointing and thicknessing all that hard maple 
by hand.

We were feeling squeezed from three years in the tiny condo, but we 
found that housing prices had risen rapidly. A lot of shopping showed 
us that we could afford only one type of house that we found 
interesting - older rural homes and repurposed structures. We bid on a 
converted schoolhouse and a converted barn, and finally found a deal on 
a historic half-cape in central RI. The house had been in the same 
family since it was built c.1765! The owner was going into a nursing 
home due to her gradual loss of sight and none of her kids wanted the 
house. Most of the colonial houses we had seen were a big mess from 
generations of refits, but in this case the family had been very late 
adopters when making any changes. So the systems were fairly modern; 
the house never had any lead plumbing or knob/tube wiring. It finally 
got a regular kitchen with a rear addition in 1990, at which time the 
basement was made deeper and paved. Very good shop space. There was a 
two car garage from the thirties when the family got a Ford truck for 
the small orchard they had. The old dry-fit stone wall still rings the 
three acre site, with a nine foot thick sugar maple standing watch at 
the front gate. The front, or keeping, room was a step back in time - 
huge fieldstone fireplace, timber framing, wrought-nailed oak flooring, 
milk painted wainscoting. We wanted to clear some brush and 
re-establish an orchard of apples, pears and cherries. It promised to 
be a nice adventure until the 9/11 attacks and my layoff. We had to 
kill the purchase and the ongoing sale of the condo.

Numerous factors contributed to the decision to move in early 1994 to 
an historic downtown street in Springfield, MA. It was mostly built in 
the 1800's, some houses and many townhouses. Our townhouse was built in 
1884 of brick with slate shingles on the front of the mansard roof. 
There is 1100 square feet of living space plus a full basement. It's 
the driest basement I've ever seen and pretty good shop space except 
for the huge boiler room right in the middle. One interesting feature 
is the door detailing. All 33 doors are the same with a molding applied 
along each rail, a stopped chamfer on each stile, and very low relief 
raised panels. We needed to remodel the outdated kitchen and I thought 
it would be neat to use the same design on the cabinetry. Of course 
that would mean making them myself, so then I might as well make the 
boxes as well, so then I might as well design it all, might as well do 
the countertops, etc.,etc. I was very intimidated by the prospect but 
the projects I have been reading about on the Old Tools list inspired 
me to go ahead with the whole shebang. You folks have shown me the 
value of getting started and finding the solutions on the way.

So last Feb. I gutted the ugly brown old kitchen, leaving only the tile 
floor and fridge. My wife and I designed the layout, and I made 
drawings for the cabinetry. After all the hardware had been chosen and 
listed, I sat down at the computer to order it all. This surprised me 
by taking six solid hours of typing. That's when the magnitude of the 
job hit me; after all, if I order 2000 screws, somebody's got to drive 
those screws. With the size of the job, there will be plenty of power 
tool use, but great opportunities to exploit hand tool advantages as 
well. A good example is the door panels of cherry. A couple of test 
cuts on the tablesaw showed that the easily burned cherry would need so 
much cleanup that I might as well just do the raising by hand. I don't 
have a panel raiser, so I am using a Stanley 78 and L-N large shoulder 
plane for the finish cuts. Eleven panels down, three to go. The kitchen 
design presents opportunities for some interesting sub projects:

    Hand-planed final finish on the cherry lower cabinets
    Soapstone countertops - the cutting and honing of the stone was easy 
enough to suggest to me that I make...
    Homemade soapstone sinks - a small prep sink and a big slant front 
farm sink - these were finished early on
    Milk paint/linseed oil finish on the upper cabinets - LOML wants a 
certain red so I will be making the paint too
    Replacing two double-sash windows that were closed up in the 
seventies - I'll make these also

No, we haven't been without a kitchen for a year; we just use the 
third-floor kitchen (everybody's got one, right?). I hope to get it all 
done by...oh, it'll be done when it's done. Then I can get some other 
things started:

    marble tile in entry hall
    remodel bathroom
    finish making half-finished harpsichord for LOML - this has been 
stalled for 13 years
    repair case of other harpsichord
    repair works of pump organ and make new bellows
    new, larger workbench in Yuppie Bastard style
    Make set of infill planes in style as above
    YB tool chest
    design and build new bedroom furniture
    build airplane
    live steam locomotive from scratch (sounds like a good retirement 
project)

Anyway, that's my deal. Again, I have found the List to be a great 
source of information and inspiration. I am sure it will continue to be 
so. I will post some notes about the projects mentioned as they pertain 
to List topics. Thanks to Bugbear and michael L. for your useful 
responses to my plane kit question.

Regards,
Greg Tucker

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Recent Bios FAQ