Share Your Journey
This video ended up being a bit long, so if you would rather get the “cliff notes” just read the story below.
Many of you know me from my work at Adam King Studio, but you may not know my journey into woodworking.
In 2003 I packed my truck and headed out for Massachusetts. I had just been accepted into the Fine Furniture Program at the Worcester Center for Crafts in Worcester, MA. I was headed into living a dream. I had no idea what was ahead of me.
As a kid, I always loved making things, creating things, drawing, tinkering, and building. From toy bows and arrows to coat racks, I always found myself in the middle of something creative. As I got older I decided to pursue carpentry. From there I learned finish carpentry, basic cabinet making, and even dabbled a bit in furniture. I used to pick up a few old pieces here and there and restore them in my spare time. All the while discovering magazines and devouring books on woodworking. I was hooked.
Finally after a few years of this, I decided to try my first furniture making class at the community college. Three months later, I had a tragic table, two mangled fingers from a tablesaw accident, and a new found passion! There was no going back. I remained at the college taking furniture night classes for a few years, and then the day came to decide to do it for real. I searched for schools in the East Coast area and even took a survey trip out there to see them.
So, as I mentioned above, I packed my truck and was on my way. I had a great education there, and it even changed my life, although I was not aware of it at the time. While I was out there, I had a few obstacles. I was homeless for a while, and even stole food to eat. Poverty, poor living conditions, vehicle meltdowns, you name it, it happened. Despite all of those things, I knew I was out there for a reason. I had a passion I could no longer ignore. I knew that if I didn’t learn the art and craft of furniture making, I would always live to regret it.
Fast forward to now, and I’m typing this story to share with all of you. I still go through difficulties, but it’s the journey that makes all of this worth it. The journey of discovery. The journey of knowledge. The journey of self-awakening. Woodworking is a journey. Look back to the time you first became interested in woodworking, and then look at yourself now. Despite the difficulties, you savor that process of growth. You wouldn’t trade it for anything. You see, it’s the journey that makes us craftsmen and accomplished woodworkers.
We all have a journey. You never know when your journey will inspire another’s.
Share yours below.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I started to get more serious about woodworking about 15 yrs ago. At that time I was a finish carpenter. Actually woodworking came earlier in life, working with my grand father as well as taking grade school and high school wood shop classes. After years of woodworking for fun I decided to open my own shop and begin woodworking full time. I started by renting a 3000 square foot shop in an old woolen mill in Grafton, WI. Most of my work back then was kitchen cabinets, entertainment centers etc.
After awhile I became bored building kitchen cabinets so I started to get more involved with furniture such as tables, solid wood cabinets, bookcases and beds. Fifteen years later I’m still building furniture but now I work in a much smaller studio and my focus is mainly contemporary where before I was more involved with Shaker and Arts & Craft. I also let most of my stationary and power tools go and replaced them with hand tools, primarily Japanese. I now enjoy woodworking more than ever and exhibit my work at shows and galleries.
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Adam, thank you for your candor and honesty in relating your story.
I believe that woodworking finds us. Some start in childhood on their journey while others seem to happen upon woodworking as an adult. When I moved into my house in 1992, there was, and still is, a big ugly workbench in the basement. At the time, I couldn’t afford to accessorize my house and it occurred to me that I might be able to make a few things. With jigsaw and drill in hand, I made a box. Then I bought a book on basic woodworking. Then the lightbulb went on. It’s been a passionate, focused, thoroughly enjoyable journey ever since.
I also believe in synchronicity. Over the years, I’ve taken classes that seemed disparate, but are coming together to help me achieve my new goal: building carved, reproduction 16th c. hand planes. Who would have guessed? I think it found me.
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Adam and I have been friends for several years now. We get to talk over coffee at our favorite coffee house on occasion, and I always come away inspired. Not only is he an artist, but a brilliant planner and visionary. His journey will benefit each and everyone that finds it….not just woodworkers.
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Twitter: woodwhisperer
12/16/2009 at 7:28 pm
This is just like one of our many “coffee talks”. Always inspirational! Hey I sound just like Glenn above.
Thanks for sharing your history with us. Can’t wait to see how the site develops and unfolds.
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My journey so far has taken me to lots of places over the world with woodworking as a central theme. I will try to endeavor to keep it brief.
As a boy I always wanted to be a woodworker of some kind. After High school at seventeen I left home and New Zealand and moved to Australia looking for work. I found a job at a boatbuilders and after my trail time was given a apprenticeship which I loved. Do to the expense of wooden boatbuilding the company moved away from wooden boats and in to fiberglass (not so fun anymore).
Not liking this new medium I hit the high seas and became a crew member on a super-yacht and with my back ground in boatbuilding I fitted in very nicely. Big yachts have lots of woodwork to repair and miles of varnish to lay. This job showed me the world from the Pacific ocean through Asia and the Indian ocean and to Europe and back around again on a second yacht, all the while woodworking. Following four years at sea I worked in Florida for two years at a private estate taking care of any thing my boss wanted and his two classic mahogany speed boats. (Fast wooden boats, There is a god!)
From there it was back home to New Zealand looking for what to do next but not sure what that would be, which lead me back to my love of woodworking and James Kernov’s, A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook. Has with most woodworkers this small book moved me greatly. Feeling I needed to know more about the “how” of furniture making, I enrolled in New Zealand’s only furniture making school for their first full time course at the end of which I ended up staying on at the school as a part time tudor and also taught a small wooden boatbuilding class there the following year.
Then just to keep things moving a friend of mine in Australia called me up and asked if I wanted some work refitting a 100 foot catamaran for the virgin group. So off I went with my tools to work with my mate. On the trip from the airport to the yard, my good mate informs me that I am the new foreman of the job and good luck (what are friends for).
After eight months on that job I got to go home for a time when a new job came up for my wife and I onboard a 264 foot motor yacht. My wife’s role was for the chief stewardess and mine was again to look after all the timber work inside and out and also the varnishing. Which is no small job with three decks and 500 ft of varnished teak rail to keep up with. But this time we hit the north pacific then down to Asia.
To finish off a long story made short, I am now in Rangoon, Myanmar, (Burma) on a trip with the boss, what a wild place this is. Today I saw a forty foot long, three feet wide teak log float past the boat (WOW). Only problem was the captain was not that keen on me trying to tie it to the back of the boat and drag it home, oh well maybe next time.
I have to think to myself sometimes what I owe to woodwork, it has taken me on great adventures and to a amazing places. Woodworking is my life and my journey.
Nigel Whitton
NW Designs
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Thanks for your thoughts Adam. I’d also like to add that what we do is a necessary addition to the collective of our craft. We are building on the existing knowledge base, adding our ideas and forms. Few may remember who we are as an individual but possibly our work will live on thru others that incorporate our work into theirs. I believe that it is a constant reshuffling of past forms with the relevancy of today that keeps woodworking alive. Creativity, I believe, is the ability to make connections between seemingly disparate forms and combine them in balanced sensible ways.
All the best,
Ethan
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Growing up was I always drawing I filled sketchbook after sketchbook for years. I remember being in fifth grade, sitting at the dinner table, and announcing to my family that when I grew up I was going to be an artist. My father promptly told me I was going to starve. All through high school I took all the art classes possible, but, being a shortsighted teenager, I shunned anything that resembled a shop class. I wonder where I would be now if I had gotten that jump start then. I married young, to the love of my life and focused instead on things that would earn money, getting involved in the health-care field, We started our family and out of necessity, I began learning to do things like repair car problems and use a hammer and saw when I needed to.
Then we bought a house, and along with being new owners of a turn of the century house came learning to restore, repair, and remodel. This also lead to my wife and I watching a lot of do-it-yourself T.V. including “This Old House” and of course “New Yankee Workshop.” One day while Norm Abrams was toiling away on a project, she leaned over and whispered to me “I think you should build me one of those” I don’t even remember what “one of those” was, but I remember the words. I shook it off, I wasn’t capable of that. But she would repeat something similar over and over. I gained more and more confidence through various remodeling projects and I began to stretch my skills and expand on the tools I needed to shape wood. I started to buy woodworking magazines and ponder the projects inside. I had the bug for sawdust and it’s been an adventure ever since. Sometimes I wonder when my wife gets exasperated by my time in the shop if she regrets whispering that sweet suggestion in my ear so many years ago, but I know she’s proud of everything I turn out and she even reaps the rewards of getting “one of those” from time to time.
She’s going back in school for nursing now, and we have a deal. When she graduates and gets some good work herself, I get to pursue custom woodworking further, and turn it from a hobby to a career.
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