My online book's title:
The
Amateur Woodworking Movement in America:
A
History of Technological, Psychological, Economic, Sociological,
Aesthetic, and Political Transformation
My Editorial Advisors
I want to
acknowledge, with appreciation, my good fortune in getting Rick
Antrobus, Charlie Belden, Robert Bernstein, Bob Black, Dave Blair, Skip
Campbell, Tom Caspar, Ray DeVries, Herb Hedstrom, Jeff Joslin,
John Martin, Frank and Ann Nugent, John Orvis, Dave Potts, Keith
Rucker, Jim Talbot, and Jim Wassel to be Editorial Advisors for this
project.
Rick
Antrobus -- a 32-year-old doctoral candidate in Electrical
Engineering -- tells me that he really is a wannabe woodworker,
"sidetracked
with have taken a long tangent into machinery collecting and rebuilding
on the way to setting up my own woodworking shop. To date, thanks
to my interest in living in and restoring older homes, most of my work
with wood has been more carpentry than fine woodworking.
As far as
the bio goes, I'm an electrical engineer. I worked in robotics
and then fiber optics for 8 years before going back to school to get my
Ph.D. That's where I am now... a full-time student, about half
way thru the Ph.D. process.
Some day
I'd like to be as good with working wood as I am with rebuilding
machinery, but that will take many more years. The machinery work
comes naturally to me, as I spent most of my youth working on cars and
trucks."
Also an
amateur woodworker, Charlie Belden runs his
own website, a website dedicated to assisting woodworkers display
their contributions to the movement.
Keith
Bohn founded
the Old WoodWorking Machines Forums in 2000 and along with moderating
that site tries also to divide his time between his family, work and
putting together a shop. His favorite machines are the ones that you
might find in small commercial or high-end hobbyists shops from fifty
plus years ago.
Skip
Campbell, a retired military officer, is a walking encyclopedia of
Shopsmith history and technology. In his retirement, Skip restores and
sells Shopsmiths through his website, mkctools.com.
Tom
Caspar is a Senior Editor at American Woodworker [more
to come]
Herb
Hedstrom served
for thirty-nine years as a pastor in a small Protestant denomination,
the Evangelical Covenant Church. He has dabbled in
woodworking for almost as long and, as the happy owner of a 50+ year
old Shopsmith 10 ER, have an interest in old woodworking machinery.
Randy
Johnson, Editor at American Woodworker [more to come]
Brian Kachadurian, with a passion for machinery and vehicles,
Brian has a MS-Mechanical
Engineering degree from the University of Michigan.
He has worked seventeen years engineering Chrysler vehicles, currently
is working for the US Army as the lead engineer for the
HMMWV.
Bob
Kutella, a Chemical Engineer by training, indulges in his hobby,
ferroequinolgy (railroads), by volunteering at the Illinois Railway
Museum in Union, IL. There he is responsible for the IRM?s collection
of woodworking equipment. ?While trains are the primary focus there, we
have managed to restore and place 13 machines into operation in our new
woodshop area where they are used to help in the restoration of the
railroad equipment. In the woodworking arena I have furnished some of
our home with my furniture and tried to reproduce many items for the
railcars, some of which might approach fine woodworking.?
Jeff
Joslin -- who lives in Ottawa -- is historian at Old Woodworking Machines and
co-director Directory of American
Tools and Machinery Patents.
Dave
Blair is a woodworker friend here in town (Bellingham WA), whose
many talents include assistance on electricity in the workshop.
Jim
Talbot, not a woodworker, is very knowledgable about website
building.
Likewise,
neither Frank nor Anne Nugent are woodworkers, but --
for different reasons -- have taken a keen interest in the project.
Frank advises me about issues relating to psychology, while Anne prods
me about injecting the "personal" into the narrative. Jim, Frank, and
Anne are all Bellingham residents.
John
Martin, whose career has ranged through computer programming, mail
order marketing, and consultant to mail order catalog companies, has
been "a woodworker since I was maybe 2", with emphasis on "Delta".
"Some were bought in running condition, some needing a lot of repairs."
Ann Nugent,
a life-long friend from my university days, Ann --- a student of
history -- strongly suggests that I inject a personal note into
the narrative. More or less following Ann's suggestion, I have (barely) started
composing a "Memoir",
which you can look at it by clicking here.
As a lad,
says John Orvis, "I helped my dad with all sorts of woodworking
projects and carpentry. Took 2 years of elementary school woodshop and
1 year of high school woodshop. Have made furniture, cabinets, tool
sheds, many household projects." A member of OWWM, John also collects old woodworking
machines.
This is Dave
Potts' personal webpage and, on
OWWM, he's here. As you
will note in examining Dave's webpages, he both makes furniture and
collects old woodworking machines.
Keith
Rucker is the webmaster at Old Woodworking Machines (www.owwm.com). Keith is
writing a documented history of the Ohio-based woodworking machine tool
company, Crescent Machine Company.
A librarian by day, for nearly 30 years, by
night and weekends
Gary Roberts has collected books and
ephemera of early
tools, crafts, trades and industries, and as well, the tool themselves.
With a
background in research as well as the web user interface, document
digitization and information management, Gary realized that his
collection was sitting on the shelves, doing nothing in particular.
Frequent requests by people for information let to the creation of
The
Toolemera Press website, followed by the
Toolemera Blog.
The goal of
both services is to bring the material of "hidden" collections into the
public.
Jim
Wassel is a friend out of my past, a graduate student from the
1970s, now retired in Arizona, with a penchant for keeping himself
helpfully busy. Jim interviews amateur woodworkers in the retirement
community in which he resides, and -- in the future -- some of these
interviews will be uploaded.
An
editorial note: If there is any feature about my attempt at writing
"history", it relates to a conviction that history -- obviously -- is
about the past, and -- to be credible -- has to be enriched by
artifacts, i.e., "primary sources", the actual items from the past.
Otherwise, without these examples from the past, attempts to
reconstruct a history are merely futile exercises in merely recounting
a "past" based on description. Unless these "descriptions" are enriched
by artifacts, the past remains dull, lifeless.
As an
example, I am introducing a series of
historical accounts of the Morris chair, from the beginnings, up to
the present, including -- in the future -- my own attempts, with
photos, to construct my own Morris chair. Likewise, in addition the
historical artifacts on the Morris chair, I am injecting other primary
sources into my history of woodworking. These sources are,
appropriately, listed (with hyperlinks) among the chapters below, and
are identified by the label, "Document", plus a number. Ex, from chap
4: Document
1: Adams Reclining Chair May 1902