hookfoot

I am a 70 year young retired Journeyman Lineman(Electrical). I have been a frustrated wood worker since I was big enough to pick up a hammer. After I graduated from high school I spent 3 years in the US Army, the first nine months in the USA and the other 27 months in Kitzingen, Germany. Upon discharge I tended bar and worked different construction job for about 2 years. At about this time I got into the Electrical Workers Apprenticeship(a 4 year, 8000 hour program). This led to a good career in the electrical industry. While I was an apprentice I got married, started a family, bought a house and got back to wood working when time allowed. About this time i started to remodel my parents house. We done the outside first, then the inside, with a complete rewire(upgrade to 200 AMP). While doing this and working a lot of overtime I still managed to do some work on my own house. With the help from a good father in law and a lot of knowledgable friends over the years I have learned to do a lot of good things. Most of my woodworking until I was 49 years old was home repair/rebuild. I retired early because of an accident and to keep myself sane I started working in my shop on smaller projects. My wife and I started small craft buisness in 1992 making clocks,music boxes shelves picture frames, ets. I always wanted to make scale model toys so I bought a couple of plans and built these models. They were nice wood toys but not exactally what I wanted. For the next couple of years, while working on our crafts I kept looking at trucks and equipment and thinking of a way that I could make the models that I wanted. One day while I was thinking outside of the box a friend asked me if I could build a 1/16 scale excavator and I would try. The rest is history. I take pictures and measurements (A LOT) of the piece that I am going to make. Than I start making pieces from these sketches and pictures paying close attention to the measurements etc. After some long walks and some long drives (where I do a lot of thinking) these pieces eventually will start to fit together. It is suprising where and when some of these ideas come to me. A few last thouthts. I have no secrets about what or how I do things. Every once in a while I am telling someone how I do things I am told that I can not do that and my answer is that I did not read that chapter in the book. When I get a little more electronical knowledge I will try to post some pictures. Later