So, who is this guy and why the heck is he doing this anyway?
I am Howard Ruttan. I create precision sawdust and I love it. I was never what I considered to be "good with my hands", although I have played piano and guitar since I was knee-high to an earthworm. However, one day I needed furniture and didn't have the money to buy it.
Eyeing up a lovely set of furniture in IKEA (told you I was broke), I decided, "Hey! I can cut up termite barf as well as the next guy!" The result: I made myself an apartment full of furniture with the help of my Dad and his tools. Once you do that there is no going back.
That was over twenty years ago and I am still wrecking perfectly good pieces of lumber as a means of self gratification, but in my own shop. And much has happened. I have acquired a shop full of tools and hauled it all around the continent. The New Yankee Workshop aired and changed the face of woodworking and the availability of tools. And the Internet brought us the World Wide Web and search engines, and rec.woodworking - which  I have followed for many years. I have built everything from birdhouses to chicken barns, fine furniture to kitchen cabinets, and piles and piles of sawdust and shavings that wilted my wife's rose bushes when I over-mulched. I was a woodworking teacher for a time and I have been a professional woodworker - but I remain always a student of the craft.
With all the learning I have squirrelled away over the last two decades, if I get hit by a Volkswagen-sized asteroid tomorrow as it hurtles toward Earth, my kids won't benefit from any of the things I have learned unless I put pen to paper, or pixels to CRT in this case. What better way of sharing what I have learned than putting up a web site. Thus, here we are; I thought I would share with you too and maybe you would return the favor when I get stuck for an answer next time. Enjoy and God bless. Life is good! Work wood! |
