OldTools Archive

Recent Bios FAQ

137507 "Gerber, Adriaan" <agerber@b...> 2004‑10‑06 bio
Gentle Galoots,

I've been lurking for a while now and have greatly enjoyed reading my
daily digest, you guys (& gals) are funny! It's clear that this group
reflects the nature of doing work with quality hand tools.=20

I've been hesitant to post my bio since I have no years of experience or
beautiful projects to report, but I have been needing to ask questions
or respond to tools for sale so here goes:

I'm a computer programmer doing web development at Boston University. I
moved here from South-Africa in 1997 due to the violence in the country
(South-Africa, that is) and wanting to see the good ol' U.S. of A.
Before that I was a technician for the South-African Post and Telecom
company. I'm somewhat of a Renaissance man in that I have a lot of
different interests with not a lot of time to pursue each fully.
Recently I've built a charcoal furnace and cast some aluminum ingots, I
plan on trying some green sand casting soon. During the past winter I
started building a toolbox to keep at least my tools under control and
no, I'm not posting any pictures. Let's just say it's a prototype.. I've
made a few yucky whirligigs that you can see at
http://www.adriaangerber.com but the most competent part of that has
been generating the pages myself using a simple text database and Perl.
I've done a little bit of jewelry work in silver and I'd like to do some
coppersmithing, too. So far I've been limiting my woodwork to reflect my
skill level, making simple items like a computer desk out of cheap wood.
It takes some of the pressure off and I can always blame the looks on
the wood :> I like to recycle and conserve, so my neighbors are
unwittingly contributing to my woodpile on trash day. Amazing what
you'll find if you look closely. Oh, and I've carved the little guy in
"Carving Caricature Figures from Scratch" out of basswood, that came out
nice. There's a picture on my page of me with a bunch of little items
I've made.

I actually have a book recommendation. This group reminds me very much
of "The Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club" by Bill Henderson, it's about
what certain technologies have done to us.=20

And now I'll re-cloak..

Adriaan Gerber



Recent Bios FAQ