OldTools Archive

Recent Bios FAQ

141172 "Ken Greenberg" <ken@c...> 2005‑01‑27 galoot bio update
Gentle Galoots:

As has been suggested with some subtlety, my official Galoot bio has
been somewhat out of date, in that it's been eight years since it was
posted. That means I've been on this list for nine years, counting the
one year lurker lead time. Well, you would think I'd have learned
something in all those years, but the need to update my bio once in a
while is obviously not one of them.

OK, basic stuff - rather than updating my age, which I have sworn is not
going to keep increasing, just say I was born on Christmas Day in 1948.
You do the math. I am married to a lovely woman named Mary that some of
you have met. This is the second marriage for both of us, and we each
brought one "child" to the union. My son and former shop assistant, Dan,
is one reason I got into woodworking in the first place. He is now
married and living in Raleigh, NC. He is a chip (computer, not wood)
designer for IBM. Mary's daughter Elizabeth lives in San Diego and is
teaching. I have worked in the computer industry for about 30 years,
both as a hardware type and more recently a software designer. Most of
the last 15 years were spent in management anyway. I used to run my own
company developing engineering software, but eventually decided it was
less fun than I had expected and I shut things down. I now do some
consulting in the software development tools industry. Home is Santa
Rosa, California - the largest city in Sonoma County, an area more known
for wine, olives, and goat cheese than high-tech industry.

I got into woodworking when my son was quite young, since it seemed like
a good thing to do together. I started reading rec.ww to learn more
about tools and techniques, but eventually got tired of the same old
questions. Besides, I noted that the few literate people in the group
(like LaMantia, Leach, and O'Deen) were posting less frequently - where
had they gone? (I used to be a writer, I've published articles in many
magazines, and I have always had an appreciation of people who use the
language well - just as I appreciate those who use any tool well.) Well,
I found them here, and signed up in 1996. That's a lot of messages
through the modem.

While I will admit to knowing next to nothing about hand tools when I
signed up, I tend to absorb information like a sponge and am pretty
adept at organizing it and presenting it in reasonably understandable
form. As I said, I used to be a writer. Now any writing I do tends to be
related to the old tools world. I have published articles in local
newsletters (e.g., PAST ToolTalk) and Fine Tool Journal. I teach some
classes at the local Woodcraft, mostly about sharpening edge tools. I
also have some new classes in preparation (e.g., box making). I have
presented short sessions on hand saw sharpening at the local galoot
gatherings, and I did a writeup and demo on making molding using hollows
and rounds, plus a few other tools. All these documents are generally
available on my web site, http://www.calast.com/personal/ken/wood.htm,
but feel free to ask if you can't find something.

Speaking of web sites, I am webmaster for PAST (Preserving Arts and
Skills of the Trades). I also maintain the web-based old tools book
list, the address of which is
http://www.calast.com/personal/ken/booklist.htm.

In reviewing my old bio, I was highly amused to note that I owned three
planes at that time. I don't count planes any more, but the number is
somewhere around
75. About two thirds of these are wooden molding planes, the rest metal
    planes (bench and specialty). Yes, I use them all. So 72 planes in
    eight years means that I have been acquiring planes at the run rate
    of nine per year. Just gives you an idea of the angle of the slope
    out here. Dozens of saws, dozens of chisels, many dozens of pieces
    of bitstock - the list goes on. I had to learn database programming
    just to keep track of it all.

My woodworking activity is relatively light these days, but I have made
a reasonable amount of furniture as well as a number of small boxes,
most of which are no longer around here. I did manage to photograph most
of them before they went out the door, so visit the web site if you want
to see examples of my work. The larger projects generally have
descriptive text associated with them.

When I moved to Santa Rosa in May of 2003, I upgraded the shop space
from half of a two car garage to an entire two car garage. It is my
intent to build a dedicated shop building for hand tool use only, but
finding a contractor in this area for such a small job has been a bit of
a challenge. Still, I hope to get it done some time in 2005. We'll see
how things went in another eight years when I get around to updating
this thing again. Meanwhile, I have about an acre of land to play with
(gardening, creating and consuming wood piles, renovating outbuildings,
etc.). I would list some of my other interests, but the Internet
probably doesn't have the bandwidth to handle that much information.

I have no idea how I ever found time to go to work every morning for all
those years.

-Ken

Ken Greenberg (ken@c...) 667 Brush Creek Rd., Santa Rosa, CA 95404
http://www.calast.com/personal/ken/wood.htm Visit the oldtools book list
at http://www.calast.com/personal/ken/booklist.htm

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Recent Bios FAQ