how did you get started in WW

[Stytooner]

I chose other because I really picked it up myself. I started drawing at a very early age. About the same time I learned to write my name. Maybe 6 years old. It was only a couple years after then, that I really wanted to build something I had drawn. Since I drew a lot of fast cars, that was out of the question. I built go carts using lawn mower wheels, 2x4's 6's and 8's. I learned to use a hand saw, hammer, tape measure and other hand tools. We always had scrap around and live next to a cool paved hill of a church next door. I leaned how to design good steering and braking mechanisms, which all the later designed carts had. I am lucky to have survived childhood the more I think about it.
At 10 to 14, I had my own bicycle shop for all the neighborhood kids. I usually traded stuff to fix the bikes. At the same time, I started building models. Some balsa wood planes. Then joined the BS for a couple years.
When I took shop class in HS, I was already ahead of the curve with several small projects out of wood under my belt. I honed my power tool skills there with belt sander demolition Derby and other nonsense. I did have fun and built a couple major projects. I continued to do woodworking and building things form there on out. Usually my projects were to fill a need. I guess they still are.
I just like makin stuff.

[BigguyZ]

Here's my progression to getting into WWing. Was a computer geek in college, and started building my own. Eventually got into Case Modding, as it was a way to be creative and use my hands.

Then I got into Home Theater. Now I was looking at buying some nicer speakers, and stumbled accross a post on AVSforum.com on building High Quality DIY speakers. At first I thought I never would, but I read more and more about it and thought I could do it. My experience with modding computer cases and building circuits was what gave me the confidence that I could build speakers. I don't think I would have thought I could have done it otherwise. So I built the speakers. Again, I felt a lot of pride and satisfaction in using my hands in creating something. So after investing several hundred $ in tools (at the time it seemed like a lot of $$... Oh boy did I learn), I thought I wanted to move on to other WWing projects. about 2 years later, I'm still working on finishing the shop!

Now I've gotten into making pens. I think largely because their fairly quick to do, and I can finally get a finished project that looks great.

[bigsteel15]

Shop class and relative

Initially shop class then later in life recognizing that my Great-great Grandfather was a finishing carpenter and made some nicec items. This inspired me.
That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

[mschrank]

I answered high school shop class, but it was actually jr. high shop class (7th grade). Back then, boys took shop and girls took home economics. Had a really great instructor who made some amazing furniture and was very patient.

I remember being most enthralled with the lathe...funny since I don't have much interest in turning now.

[ChrisD]

A very good friend gave me a portable Ryobi TS for Christmas '01, along with a challenge to build the dollhouse that my daughter had been asking for. I made sample rip, cross, and miter cuts and from that time on convinced myself that I could build anything.

The dollhouse has yet to progress from being a concept.

[gwyneth]

The dollhouse has yet to progress from being a concept.

That's very smart of you--by the time it's done, she'll be old enough to appreciate it and not destroy your work.

[burrellski]

I voted other, Great-Grandfather

[gsmittle]

[snip]

Folks don't realize the benefits of being able to apply math and science and critical thinking skills in an immediate application as they are learned.

Don't get me started on standardized tests! I'm amazed that the folks who dream those up don't understand how a supposedly unrelated class can help test scores! In my district, Middle School drama classes were cut to double up on math and English. Somehow nobody understands the creative problem-solving inherent in the so-called "non-core" classes.

I'll get off the soapbox now.

g.

[gsmittle]

Stay away from highly figured wood. Highly figured wood = meth. And for crying out loud, at all costs, stay away from burl! Burl = heroin.

BTW, I have a big stack of curly maple in the shop. Would you like a piece? Come on . . . . I'll give you the first piece free . . . all the other woodworkers are doing it . ..

Jeff, you are an evil, evil man. Can I have a piece of curly maple, man, I'm Jonesin' bad.... You know I'm good for it, man.....

g.

[Black wallnut]

It is far more complicated for me than the options listed in the poll. Both my father and his father are/ were woodworkers. I still have memories of walking into my grandfather's shop and inhaling the aroma of walnut. He lived in Independence Iowa so walnut was very available. The first woodworking I did was in junior high shop class. Ater that I did a few piddly projects while I was in HS. Plus a bunch of home repair/ improvement projects that my dad had me do, some with his assistance, some with me assisting him.

What really fueled my motivation was a need for custom furniture for my other hobbies. Fly tying and metalic cartridge reloading. I needed a way to store my stuff that kept it accessable and yet stored. Watching PBS's Router Workshop and New Yankee Workshop also fanned the flames. This opened my eyes to what I could do with a few better, larger power tools. Prior to buying my BT3K I used a 9.6v Makita cordless saw and before that a hand saw.

[ironhat]

I'm not much of a reader, other than 'how to' books and I only like non-fiction because it's about thngs that actually happened so I'm really enjoying everyones personal journey. Mine? I always liked being with my Dad who was a great handyman. There was *nothing* that he wouldn't tackle. Unfortunately, I learned much later in life, that the reason that he wouldn't let me help was that he wanted his son to aspire to a non-manual labor sort of job. In HS I layzed around without a direction until I spent a summer in a kitchen with a guy two years older than me. He had decided to go into Industrial Arts education and wow'ed me with the machinery and processes that he was learning. That was it. I shifted into high gear and did the same. Four years later, when I got my first job teaching general shop I realized that I was miserable. The discipline problems in the school were off the charts and we were forbidden to do much at all about it - not even stand them in a corner. Following the suggestion of the other shop teacher I bailed on teaching and found my way to the railroad as a car mechanic and inspector... in the same shop where my Dad had worked and promised to 'break my legs' if I ever went to work for the RR. Dad had become a General Foreman by then and tried to push me into management. It never happened. I became disabled and moved on and found that if was going to be able to lve in the house we had bought I had better gain some skill sets. So, I did handyman stuff until recently, when the last bird flew the nest and old dad could afford to have 'real' tools and build neat projects. Now, when finish a project I feel lost until the next one is found and started.

[Pappy]

Some intro as a kid at the 'Y' in the summers. Real interest started when I worked for a lumber yard/home builder that had an on-site cabinet shop to build custom cabinetws for the homes. When I wasn't busy in the yard or making deliveries, I helped in the cabinet shop. We took on some interesting outside projects.

[Papa]

How I Got Started

In the late 1940's when I was in 7th grade, our school district installed an old rail car equipped with workbenches and tool cabinets behind our grade school. All the 7th-grade boys got to take wood shop. It was all hand tools, but boy did we have fun. I've been hooked ever since. My Mom had a sailboat-shaped whatnot shelf I built hanging on her wall until it was destroyed by a fire almost 20 years later.

Papa

[JoeyGee]

I stahted watching Nahm back in grade school when it first started. My brother was a wannabe architecht and watched TOS religiously. With NYW being on right after, I watched it. After high school, I started watching it again and was always fascinated with the projects. With money now in my pocket, I kept thinking, I can buy one of THOSE--until the wide belt sander, of course...

When I got married and owned my first house, LOML had tons of project ideas, and let me indulge myself in my attempts at making them. Recently we heard that that house went up for sale, and my wife was reminiscing on it being our kids' first house, where they first walked, etc. I thought about my first shop and the projects that had to be left behind as part of the house