I became enthralled with the craft and ate slept and lived woodworking for the next several years. When one of my clients asked me to build a room onto their house and to build furniture for it (a dining room), I consented and began another aspect of my career, interiors. I decided that staying in the shop all year was not the greatest thing physically and psychologically, so I began finding other work which would get me outside in the summer and build furniture in the winter. I took on most any project with only one stipulation, and that was I had to design it. After a couple of years of building outside in the summer and inside in the winter I met a woman who wanted me to go to Costa Rica and build her a house. The house had to be made by hand as there was no electricity at the site. Of course this intrigued me and I accepted. The job turned out to be something less than expected but the chance to visit Cost Rica and make some friends there was invaluable.
I returned to furniture making and one summer project a year. My interest in wood and woodworking still was very high. I had gotten to the point that I was booked up for a year at a time. My quality continued to improve and projects became more and more complicated. I had never developed a style, choosing to design to fit the needs and desires of my clients.
My thoughts turned once again to Costa Rica. I loved the place, the quality of life, the simplicity and all the beautiful woods. I had met some good people who lived in a Quaker community there, and knew they were always looking for teachers at their school. As my wife was a grade school teacher and I had taught woodworking we wrote a letter asking for jobs at the school. AS the jobs are basically volunteer, $1 an hour plus accommodations, we were eagerly accepted. We lived there and I taught woodworking to all the kids, 1st thru 12th grade (it is a requirement at their school), for the next 2.5 years. My wife only taught one year. The classes were only three days a week, so I had plenty of time to make furniture. With the limited income from the school I took on odd jobs mostly of a woodworking nature. I also taught a few campesinos (farmers) woodworking for fun.
One day a stranger came up to me and asked if I would build a house for him. He had heard about me and wanted a nice vacation home. He turned out to be a film maker and was very much into beautiful woods. So for the next year I built ( with some local help) a vacation cabin with several dozen native woods. The house sat on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Pacific ocean fifty miles away and 4500 ft below. I built this house entirely by hand until the final finishing when we got electricity. All exposed beams were handplaned. I made all the doors, windows, cabinets, and furniture for the house. And at the same time I taught two non-woodworkers to be craftsman.
In 1984 we returned to the US and I fell right back into the furniture business as if I had never left. In fact business was so good with the furniture I could not make time to do outside jobs. In the next ten years I only managed to do a couple of outside jobs. One was a enclosed porch with a multilevel deck, all of redwood. Also with this job I built a stone patio with a stone waterfall and pool. This job took a couple of summers. It wasn't long before I started to wonder about my early goal of writing. Remembering the axiom of writing about what you know, I started editing the newsletter for the local woodworker's club. This helped satisfy my need to write. Then one day I received a letter from an editor of a woodworking mag, telling me that he had read one of my articles in the newsletter and would like me to re-write it for publication. I couldn't believe it, after all the manuscripts I had sent in and had rejected in my early days, here was an editor knocking at my door. I froze up, developed writer's block and never wrote the article. I went into a mild depression and quit writing anything.
The nineties came and thoughts of writing once again returned. I wrote an article which was published in FWW in 1993 issue 99, and another in the same year issue 103. I also did a couple of reviews, issues 102 and 108. I plan on doing more articles after I finish my present project. For the last year and a half I have been building a house for my wife and I on our land. I have done virtually all the work myself, including the plumbing, and heating. This has been a very demanding, often frustrating experience, and although the rewards will be great I do not recommend it without help. It has shown me that two people can work more than twice as fast as one. I am down to building the cabinets and baseboards and of course the many undone things which were put off for one reason or another.
In a nutshell; My only job for the past 23 years has been designing and building furniture, interiors, houses, teaching, and a little writing. All relating to woodworking. I have only once in that time made more than one of a piece which was not part of a set. I prefer tropical woods ( I have planted more than I will ever use), using uncommon ones as much as I can. This, I feel is the best way to help with rainforest destruction. The vast majority of the forest depletion is from burning. People will hesitate to burn woods if they become valuable. I also use some local woods. By far my favorite is Mahogany but I am limiting my use of it as it becomes more depleted. I love the many different kinds of rosewoods. My favorite local wood is ash but I probably use more walnut. I enjoy hand tools but appreciate the quality produced by some machines. I attempt to make the best piece I can hoping that each new one is a little better than the last. Because of this I prefer to use the tool which will do the best job that it was intended for, regardless whether it has a cord or not. My shop is relatively small, 768 sq. ft. I have the basic machines, ie; table saw, band saw, jointer, planer, drill press, router, sanders, drills etc. I also have a healthy assortment of hand tools. I have made many pieces without machines but none without hand tools.
I have made practically every type of furniture, ie; tables, chairs, chests, cabinets, grandfather clocks, desks, credenzas, file cabinets, game boards, hand carved signs, entertainment centers, wall panels, carved doors, windows, and even a coffin (very tragic experience). I also do some sculpture. I do a lot of inlay and some marquetry and parquetry. I do very little veneer work but what I do I usually make, I also make all my inlay bandings. Most of my work is neo-classic and oriental influence.
Woodworking has been my life for many years and I enjoy teaching and sharing my knowledge as much as the woodworking itself. I strongly encourage any body with an interest, stressing the many values of creating a tangible object with one's own hands. I also try to promote the fact that our chosen medium is more than an inanimate piece of material but the aftermath of a living being to which we are all interconnected.
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