Making Things

I am the first to admit that I have an unusual number of interests, hobbies, passions, that revolve around making things. Software development, wood working, audio and video production, and automotive restoration, to name just a few. Sometimes people are surprised to learn that I have almost no formal training to speak of in any of these areas. I’ve made my living working in software development since 1994 and written tens of thousands of lines of code for more systems and apps then I can recall and worked my way up from Junior Programmer to Director but my actual education? The BASIC programming book that came with my Commodore VIC-20 when I was 8, computer lab at Valley Middle School, the computer programming math elective in high school, and 13 months at CDI Computer Academy to learn the fundamentals of DOS, Unix, and C. That was it. Everything else? Self-taught.

My other interests are no different. Fly tying? Bought supplies and a book, started tying. Electronics? Bought supplies and a book and started making guitar pedals. Woodworking? Bought tools and a couple books and started making furniture and guitars. Audio production? Bought a 4-track and instruments and microphones and started making records (it’s all computers now but that one started a loooooonnnnnngggggg time ago). I just like making stuff. Working with my brain and my hands to turn something into something else or make something where there was nothing before.

I like to share my interests, I like to show people what I’m working on, and I often get asked the same questions, so here I will go about answering my Frequently Asked Questions:

Q. Where did you learn to do “X”?

A. Reading (books, internet) to learn the theory and ins-and-outs and then hands on practice to actually learn to do it. Experiment, practice, read, build, learn, repeat. This applies to the time I built a kayak, the time I wrote a Zen-inspired word game, or my most recent project, a set of floating bookshelves surrounding the stairwell to my basement. There is no magic. Read, read again, maybe watch a video online, then experiment and try to do what you read about, and then read some more, and eventually when you feel confident enough, just do it.

Q. Where do you find the time? You must have a lot of free time…

A. I do not have a lot of free time. I work full time, I have a kid and four dogs and two cats and I’m married and I have friends and I play in a band… Free time is severely constrained. Due to this I do not watch much, if any, television, I limit my recreational downtime (video games, leisure reading, watching movies), and I try to focus on only a couple creative projects in at a time. When my bookshelves are 100% complete I plan to finish up one or two lingering projects before I move on to another big one. Probably finish the guitar I built and get the transmission installed in my Fiat Spider.

Q. Don’t you spend a lot of money on these hobbies?

A. Not really. I spend as little as I can get away with. I frequent online auctions, and estate sales, and I’m constantly looking on Craigslist for cheap (or free) tools and I often find that you can do things cheaply by just learning to do them yourself. That’s half the fun. How much can I do without spending money? I once built a home-made 3-axis steadi-cam for video shoots for a total cost of $3 in parts and Razor scooter acquired at a garage sale for $1. The biggest expenses are definitely tools and supplies but if I had paid to have my bathroom vanity custom built and installed by a professional carpenter and plumber I would have probably spent over $1000. Materials cost for that project was under $200 and I got to have fun in the process. DIY is just good times. Read Make magazine sometime, lots of people have learned that you don’t need tons of money you just need patience, curiousity, and a willingness to try new things.

Q. You need a lot of space to do all this stuff, don’t you?

A. I’m not gonna lie, yes, space is really helpful. Definitely for the car stuff. I didn’t start trying to restore cars until I moved to a place with outbuildings. My work on cars before that was basic maintenance and repair of our daily drivers and building scale models of the cool cars I wished I could drive someday. 🙂 On the other hand, when I lived in a smaller house in the burbs with only a single car garage and a basement I still had a recording studio, woodworking tools, and other stuff. I built a thirteen foot kayak. I recorded multiple albums. I built a guitar. It was more limited but not impossible. In some ways the space limitations inspired creative solutions.

Q. But what if you screw up?

A. Of course I screw up. I screw up all the time. 🙂 It’s part of the fun. Sometimes I cut something the wrong length. Sometimes I cut my finger when I meant to cut a board. Sometimes I strip a screw or melt a component or sing off key and wreck an otherwise perfect vocal track. I long ago gave myself permission to make crap, the screw up, to stay dedicated to the process of making even when those things happen. Some of my favorite things about some of my favorite projects are actually workarounds to mistakes. For example, I was building a vanity for my bathroom and I cut the tops to width and realized that I had made it 1 1/2 inches narrower than the mirror above. I had wanted them to be the same width. Oops. I couldn’t add 1 1/2 inches. Instead I added towel bars to both sides that were 3/4 inches wide a piece. This made the total visual width match AND incorporated two towel bars that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. Win/win. Mistakes and limitations and constraints are all opportunities for creative thinking. I ask myself: Do I really need to fix this? Is there a way to change the project to incorporate this? What can I learn from this mistake? Do I need a band-aid?

Q. Did your parents teach you to be like this?

A. No. No, they did not. My parents didn’t do any of these things. My dad was not particularly a “handy man” type around the house. He was capable and had basic tools but I don’t remember him doing much building or making. Maybe at his day job but not as a hobby at home. I’m pretty sure my parents didn’t even know I had a computer. We didn’t weld stuff. We didn’t have woodworking tools. They weren’t big readers either. I didn’t really have many role models in this arena. In school I had shop classes, wood and metal. There were computers. My Uncle Steve did model cars, I liked that and thought it was cool, but other than that… I didn’t even have the internet, just curiousity and the library and limited funds.

Q. Isn’t it better to have things done professionally? I don’t trust myself…

A. Sometimes. I don’t insist on doing all things myself either. I am very conscious of the things I don’t know how to do and I’m very conscious of how much time and effort it can take to learn to do something properly. Take auto restoration, for example. I have three “classic” cars and a laundry list of things to do to each one. I don’t know how to do those things. I have never done them before. I will probably screw up, no matter how hard I try to avoid it. But that’s why I’m working with VERY inexpensive cars right now. If I screw up a Fiat Spider that is worth $200, well, it’s way better than screwing up a car worth $50,000. I expect to screw up while I’m learning and then screw up slightly less when I gain confidence. If I don’t have the luxury of that learning process, if it needs to be done right the first time, I will pay somebody to do it who has already learned, aka, a professional. Hardwood floors? Paying a professional. Replacing the siding on the house? Ditto. Knowing what can be tackled by me and what should be handed off is important.

Anyhow, I think it would be cool to add a portfolio section to this site to share all my fun projects with the world in case other people find them interesting. I plan to do that. As soon as I figure out how.. 🙂