OldTools Archive

Recent Bios FAQ

28552 Richard K Spencer <rkspencer@j...> 1997‑10‑16 Bio - Dick Spencer
Howdy, y'all Galoots on the porch,

Been lurkin' around for about a month now and survived my first FMM. Now
that the fog has settled a little, seems like a good time to send in my
bio.

Short version:

60 years old; been woodworking as long as I can remember; my 7-3 job was
a Chem E for a Big O'l company in Texas before they retired me last year.
Then moved to a lake in the beautiful east Texas piney woods and have
been fixing-up, painting and landscaping ever since. My workshop is now
the back corner of the garage until we can save up enough to enclose our
22'X32' RV port... maybe next year. My SHMBO is pushing for it. Think
she wants to get me back to work on her honey-do list. In the meantime I
still consider myself a user who thinks you can never get enough tools
and planes. Never know when you'll need one in the living room and you
don't want to have to go way out to the garage to get it. Right? I just
had an inspiration...if I'm going to build a new workshop, I'd better
start coll.... er acquiring tools to fill it.

Long version: (Fast forward here unless you're reading this at work on
someone else's time.)

When I was growing up in rural (I mean really rural) Missouri, we lived
just down the road from an old bachelor named Homer Wells. He was a
Galloot's Galloot in every way. He could have been Roy Underhill's grand
daddy for all the things he could make... all with hand tools. Of
course, he didn't know any different at the time. None of us had any
*l*ctr*c*ty until the REA came through when I was 10.

I can remember riding my tricycle up to his house many times, and Mom
always knew where to find me, sometimes with a switch. He took me under
his wing as his "little helper" and I spent as much time there as I
could, soaking it all up. In addition to his woodworking skills, he was
also the only watch repairman in the area. There were always all kinds
of fascinating clocks and watches sitting around ticking and chiming. 
Also, he had an old foot peddle organ that he would play for me whenever
I coaxed him hard enough. 

When he thought I was old enough for a bow and arrows, he took me out in
the timber across the road from his house and we found the perfect
hickory sapling to make a bow out of... I think he probably had it
spotted earlier. We chopped it down and split it with some wedges. He
then shaped it down to size with a hatchet, and finished it with a draw
knife and spoke shave. He was a wizard with a draw knife. Could make
anything from spoons to singletrees in just a few minutes. He didn't use
cabinet scrapers for smoothing, but had an old piece of window glass. He
would break off a piece and use it as a scraper... talk about scarrrrrrry
sharp. When the edge got dull, he would break it in two and have four
fresh edges. "Lot faster than sharpening", he would say.

For Christmas one year, he and my Dad made me a workbench. It had (still
has) a 2X20in X 4ft single plank birch top and a leg vice. I guess that
was the real start of my woodworking... using that bench and the tools
that came with it.

Both of my parents were also good woodworkers, but when you're a kid,
your folks don't know nothin'. When they ask you to drill a hole or hold
a board, it's work. If someone else asks you to, it's fun. One fun
thing I remember was helping Homer weave some hickory bark chair seats. 
I just wish that I was older at the time so that I could have retained
more details on how he did things.

We moved to town when I was in the 4th grade just after the war ended,
and tailed apprentices began to become plentiful. Neat... they made lots
of noise, kicked up clouds of dust and gave you a real adrenalin rush
trying to hang onto one. To his credit, my shop teacher in junior high
did all he could to promote the use of hand tools while not seeming to
stand in the way of progress. One half of each project had to be made by
hand... 2 table legs and 4 mortises, for example. We could use a dr*ll
pr*ss for the other legs and mortises. The only thing we weren't allowed
to touch was the gigantic behemoth j**nt*r that would roar and devour
boards like they were dessert. Our shop teacher would joint our boards
for us with the two fingers left on his right hand while the class would
cower in a corner, secretly glad that we didn't have to do battle with
that monster.

As I grew older, I acquired lots of p*w*r t**ls but none of them seemed
to live up to my expectations. They took too much time to set up, made
too much dust, were too noisy, and in general just a lot of trouble. I
am not completely weaned yet, and am a sucker for a new one every once in
a while, but my clear choice is hand tools when I can get them to do the
job. My current objective is learning how to make hand tools do more
jobs.



Recent Bios FAQ