OldTools Archive

Recent Bios FAQ

28102 Jerry Serviss <serviss@e...> 1997‑10‑09 Re: The voices within...

Lets see.... How did I get here ? This is not my .... oops. No 
singing on the list. :)

I started out as a child. I was a curious one, always into something.
I recall lurking in my dads shop looking at tools and messing with 
them. Mostly messing them up. I recall that I ruined the blade of my 
dads one bench plane by trying to sharpen it on the electric 
grinder... free hand. oh well, now I get what I deserve when I find 
one like that on tool hunting trips. 

My dad was a big do it yourself kind of a guy, a blue collar guy in a 
white collar job. He was not a woodworker in any sense of the word 
but he could fix things. I remember helping fix the roof of the 
garage after the big snow of '67' (chicago, january, 20 inches in 24 
hours). I burned my butt putting on the shingles that summer. I 
helped dad do all kinds of things like that. I did small woodworking 
kind of things; estes rockets, balsa & tissue airplane models, etc. I 
also built model cars, and planes and ships. I prefer Revell thanks 
Paddy. I was always making something. I also messed with my bikes 
alot.

As I got older it was working on cars. My first set of tools was 
bought, with my money (gifts) when I was 13. It was a 250 piece set 
of Craftsman mechanics tools. Still have them all today, 25 years 
later. I recall taking $50 off of my dad when he bet me that I would 
not have my car running on Sunday night to go to work. It did look 
grim considering that I had the whole top of the engine off to fix 
the lifters (tappets, Jeff). It was close but it fired on the first 
try as he watched in disbelief. I did some drag racing, rode 
motorcycles (got to get back to that one day) and went thru lots of 
cars. I went to engineering school, intent on becoming a 
mechanical engineer, to design engines or cars, ran into a computer 
and became a midnight hacker. The best laid plans of mice and men, eh 
?

I got the woodworking bug when I got married and need some 
stuff. Small things, shelfs etc. I'll admit that Norm had some 
influence. Ya know even thought we despise him, many of us have to 
thank him for pointing us in this direction. Lots of home remodeling 
jobs latter I discovered hand tools. I still like using a sawzall 
though. :) That was about 2 years ago, just before the list server 
started up. I got my first stuff from my dad. It was junk, fixed with 
parts from Ashby. I then bought some good stuff from Pat and the 
rest is history. Been buying stuff ever since.

Oh yea. Yankees. I sort of collect that stuff. I got about 20 pieces 
of Yankee stuff. It was my dad's #41 push drill and a #233 handyman 
drill/driver (the one with the clear handle) that I recall using 
alot as a kid that got me hooked. Those things are neat ! See, its 
really all his fault. Thanks dad.
--
Jerry Serviss
You can never own too many tools !



Recent Bios FAQ