I graduated from San Jose State University in 1973 with a degree in Industrial Engineering.  I had 6 years of machine shop experience at HP while attending school. After graduating I did Systems Analysis projects eventually becoming an IT Manager.  I grew tired of this and went back to my first love in Manufacturing.  I held various Management jobs in Lasers, Optics, Cesium Time Standards, Oscillators, and GPS timing receivers.

  I started wood working when I retired in 1999.  For the first three years I learned by reading books, magazines, and watching TV shows.  Around 2003, I started taking some classes at the local wood store and attending classes at wood shows. In 2006, I joined the West Bay Area woodturner's club and took all their introduction classes.

I started my woodworking collection in 1999 with a table saw and miter saw from Sears.  I wasn't really sure I wanted to do woodworking so I tried to keep my investment as small as possible.  After working on projects for about a year and throwing wood across my shop from trying to align the fence on the cheap saw, I found a great buy on a Jet 10" cabinet saw.  This saw was 60 miles away and not knowing much I drove my Tarus station wagon over to pick it up.  The guy looked at me like I was crazy - You sure you want to load it in there???.  Well, we dismantled the saw and got all the pieces in with the cabinet hanging out the back.  I'm not sure my front wheels were even touching the ground and the back was almost dragging.  I drove home and made it - would never attempt this again.

After this, I've never looked back and now have a fairly complete shop.  The only thing new in my shop is a 6" Jet jointer, every thing else was bought used.  I'll add a shop layout with pictures in the future.  I'm using part of a two car garage so everything is on wheels.  In 2006 I added a Jet 1236 lathe with a set of Sorby tools and a Nova chuck.  The woodturner's club warned me I'd probably spend all my time doing turning and they were right.

In 2006, I decided to start teaching at 'The Sawdust Shop' in Sunnyvale,Ca.  This has been a valuable time and has helped keep my woodworking skills up while devoting most of my time to woodturning.  I've now turned about 50 bowls, several segmented projects, lots of pen/pencil gifts, different style boxes, etc.  You can see examples in the 'Projects' section of this site.

My latest purchase is a Jet 1642 lathe with a 5 1/2" Vicmarc chuck,   Oneway coring system, Oneway steady rest, and Oneway bowl steady.  I just finished installing a Vicmarc outboard turning attachment that will let me rough turn bowls up to 28".  My Jet will do 16" but in order to get a 16" finished bowl, I have to start with closer to 20" rough bowls.  The coring system lets me cut  several bowls from one blank and is much faster than roughing out all the material from a bowl blank.

For the future, I'm planning on expanding my knowledge of segmented work to include staves and integration of carving/drilling/inserts/inlays.  I'm also planning on doing some fine spindle turnings.  I'd also like to teach an intermediate to advanced course on segmentation.