I posted a bio wayback when and apparently it was before the archives for bios
was developed.  So, at Ken's urging, I'll post another:

I don't know how I got into this exactly, but it came by degrees and any story
I am likely to tell will slight certain important moments and overemphasize
others.  The shifitng facts reflected in the stories may have more to do with
my mood at the time of the telling than anything else.  Thus, if anyone has
the
original bio and compares it, they are likely to find discrepancies and
outright contradictions.  (As good lawyers know, even honest witnesses rarely
recite the same facts the same way twice.)

Anyway, when I was a kid (mostly in the 1960s) my father spent a lot of
time in
the basement, making me toys - some incredibly complex such as a complete farm
set with outbuildings, working hoists, silos etc, and making machinery (a
lathe
and milling machine) that he hoped to use building models in his eventual
retirement.  Intermixed with that was the sort of furniture that you'd see in
popular mechanics how-to articles of that era.  Not fine furniture, but neat
enough stuff if you liked the aesthetic.  At about age 6 I designed a rubber
band gun while lying awake one night, and got my dad to help me build it the
next day.  It consisted of a barrel morticed (with a screwdriver since I was
too young for a sharp chisel as I recall) to hold a trigger, and an angular
stock.  It worked as intended.  I remember that Dad was very proud.

At the same time Dad was somewhat of a perfectionist.  (He was a mechanical
engineer of European schooling.)  I remember building three pinewood derby
racecars with him over the course of three years.  Each time he had me keep
sanding until we could get a very nice finished surface for the car.  (The
last
one won 1st place.)  So often when I wanted a project done I would try to get
him to do it.  I inherited his standards, but not his patience and it seemed
like the best way to get a well made project was to enlist my Dad's help.

Whether I got any skills out of growing up around my dad, I did get a sense
that if I wanted something I could make it.  Not having many tools when I
moved
out of my parents house, I made some pretty clunky projects  to furnish
various
apartments.  Mostly things like futon beds that would embarrass me now.  If
you
looked at them, you would most certainly conclude what I used to think, that I
did not get much by way of skills from being around my father, and that I must
just have let him build all of the projects that we made together.

But cleaning out my parents house in the past year brought to light some
evidence to the contrary.  I found a stereo tonearm of aluminum and brass that
I made on my Dad's lathe.    And the workmanship is surprisingly good.

After living in Portland Oregon for several years post undergraduate education
at Reed, I went off to Grad School in Princeton.  I liked the department there
a lot, but felt like a fish out of water in the town, and somewhat unsuited to
the work because everyone there was or seemed smarter than I was.  I consoled
myself by building a dulcimer for a friend, and from there made a copy of a
telecaster electric guitar.  I spent six months in guitar stores with a ruler
just measuring to get the project right.  And it turned out really well.
Since
I had no tools, I would go weekends to the flea markets in Lambertville.  This
was the mid 80s and handtools were relatively cheap and that led to my
purchasing some to use.  I also ran into a copy of FWW at the college
bookstore
and that gave me an idea of what to look out for.

To finish up the guitar project I needed (or thought I needed) a
drillpress.  I
went to their physics metalshop where the man who ran it was nice enough to
allow me to use the tools.  We got on well, and he soon asked me to housesit
for him at his house with a shop in the woods.  During those two weeks I
roughed out the parts of my workbench that still is not completed, though I've
used it for two years.  (My posting on this exists on someone or other's
workbench webpage and might serve as a bio in itself.)

Soon thereafter I dropped out of grad school and went back to being a legal
investigator in Portland.  My friend Gordie had a shop and many more skills
than I and helped me along.  Mixing power tools with handtools, I started an
acoustic guitar (of the then little used Claro Walnut) which was about half
complete by the time I went back to Princeton to finish up gradschool.

The second try there was charm.  I didn't feel quite so dumb, and I really
liked the people.  But I now did woodworking for fun even though not as an
escape.  I finished up the acoustic guitar my first summer back there, mostly
working in the driveway of the shared student house I rented with a number of
others.  I got to know one of my new housemates quite well as she sat on the
steps talking to me as I worked.  We still live together 10 years later and
1500 miles away.   Oh, yeah.  And I finished the guitar.

We moved to Nebraska for my job and I continued to putter on projects of
various kinds, including playing with tube hifi gear.  A couple of years
later,
Patrick's postings on Wreck woodworking caught my eye and turned my focus back
to finding handtools, though I had acquired a pretty decent working set over
the years.  I like rooting through other people's trash (Princeton was mecca
for this), and fixing broken cool old stuff.  So I had lots of projects and a
good number of chances to acquire old tools.

About two + years ago we bought a 1914 foursquare with a gutted kitchen.  Many
of you will have caught that from postings about various things that have come
up in building the kitchen we added on.  That ain't fine woodworking either,
but I like trying to restore the house to a reasonably usable reasonably
historically appropriate configuration.  And, though I still use power
tools, I
prefer to use handtools when I can.  And that's a lot of the time.  (I keep
surprising others when they come to look at what I am doing or to lend a hand
by prefering handtools for most operations.)

My basement is currently a mess, as is a lot of the house due to the
construction projects.  Jennifer is very patient about it (the mess is my
fault
not hers), but it does stress us both out a bit.  There isn't as much place to
hide from the projects as I'd like, and I keep finding more potentially useful
stuff to haul home.  Still, the kitchen is almost done. I have a large storage
locker with my dad's shop in it, since his death last February.  I hope to get
it set up to use in the next year or so, giving myself the capability to make
just about anything metal or wood.  I'm glad that he got to see many of the
projects I made, and a good part of the work we did on the house.  The
attitude
that a person can make anything if they think about how to do it I certainly
got from him, and I think it pleased both of us that I turned out to be a
better woodworker than he was, despite my lack of patience as a kid.

Anyway, that's my bio today.

Mark

Mark van Roojen                         P.O. Box 83836
Department of Philosophy        Lincoln, NE 68501-3836
University of Nebraska                  (402) 438-3724 (h)
1010 Oldfather Hall                     (402) 472-2428 (w)
Lincoln, NE 68588-0321          (402) 472-0626 (fax)
(msv@u...)