I’ve been around wood shops and making saw dust all of my life.  My father was a cabinetmaker and his shop was in the basement of our home.  He manufactured a kitchen every week.  My uncle (and I) would then help him install them.  I still remember going to the jobsite, sitting up on phone books between the two of them in our white 65 Corvair Ramp Side pick up truck.  My first project was a bird feeder that my dad helped me make when I was 5-years old.  Having access to the tools, I was always making, or attempting to make something in the basement all the time.

 

Eventually he and my mother bought the adhesive business where my dad purchased all of his cabinetmaking glue.  I joined the company in 1985 and expanded it to selling abrasives, router bits and various accessories to all of the many wood shops of western Pennsylvania and northeast Ohio.  I met all kinds of professional craftsmen and was able to observe them at their craft and adopt some of their techniques.  Some of these are my best friends to this day.  During this time I continued making furniture and redoing kitchens in the shop that was still in the basement of my parents’ house.

 

In 1993 I married and bought the house where my wife and I currently reside.  This is where my shop is now. A spacious, comfortable building dedicated to woodworking.  I have been making furniture and fireplace mantels here ever since.  Looking back, my woodworking has always been custom made to order: talking to people, getting an idea of what they have pictured in their minds, figuring the mechanics, and then creating.