OldTools Archive

Recent Bios FAQ

8238 Bill Cooper <bruno8@p...> 1996‑10‑22 Re: SW 742 (Paddy wants a Bio...)
Patrick Olguin wrote:
> 
> Hi Bill! Welcome. Oh, here's the rule. No bio, no advice :^).

(Pre meander: Thanks for the e-reply Eric. Very eloquent for a
pre-homo-sapien...)

O.K. Paddy, here goes:

20 yrs. ago I'm needing a job real bad....
I walk up to a fellow on a const. site one day, and ask him the obvious:
"Do you have any work............?"
He says "You afraid of hieghts?" 
(Hell YES!) "No."
The next thing I know, I'm a timber structure framer on big tilt-ups.
All chain saws and spud wrenches and BIG hammers (sub-neander?).
After a few years of apprentiship under this G.C. doing all manner of
const.,
recession hits and then I'm on my own doing general remodel & repair.
I do it all (but I like the wood, fin.&rough, the best) and continue on
to
build homes, lots, as a supr. for Gen.Cntrctr's, etc. (One aside, my
work buddies used to watch perplexed as I would most often grab a hand
saw to cross through a 2 or 4-by).
Life is good, and then, DeJaVu, recession hits again, and I'm back to
remodel & repair.
Then one day while I was hanging a set of french doors, it occured to me
to set down
my chisel and hammer and to go buy myself a rou*e* to mortice in the
butt hinges.
The next thing I know, I find myself wanting to build a rou*e* table and
this whole thing snowballs, and I'm working less on homes and I'm
wanting to start my own business
making hardwood fly fishermans boxes (my other passion)and my w*f* is
goin nuts and
we do a couple of shows but I dont have enough power tools to stay
competitive and I
need to get back to the real world...so I'm back in the trades now (as
an inspector).
My new found dream is relegated back to hobby status, but I've now got a
garage full of pretty hardwoods and rou*e*s. However, somewhere deep in
the back of my mind, the words keep haunting me, chop mortice,
half-blind dovetail, and I know in my heart of hearts that any of these
done on a m*ch*ne is just a cheap imitation. So one day I stop off at a
junk dealer out here in the middle of nowhere, and I see this HUGE PLANE
and I 
am immediately smitten (Bailey #7, c1915), and the crusty old dude also
sells me a #5 and all of a sudden I'm lapping and restoring all my old
hand tools, and I am completely overhelmed by this quest and thirst for
knowledge that echoes from places I have never been, which finds me
standing at your door neandermen.
 
So now I ask you the obvious, Paddy; Can I come on in and sit for a
spell? :^)
Bill "Still Searching" Cooper



Recent Bios FAQ