A few weeks ago, I got invited to write an article about a woodworking group, the Desert Woodcrafters Association in Tucson, for the magazine American Woodworker. They asked me if I could come to one of their meetings and I asked, “Can I bring my microphone?” And they said, “Sure!” So I headed off to Flowing Wells High School in Tucson on a Saturday morning to learn more about this great group of woodworkers who do so much to give back to the Tucson community.
A lot of the members of the Desert Woodcrafters also belong to the Southern Arizona Woodturners Association and Xerocraft, which is a Makerspace in Tucson. They talk about all three groups, so that can be a little confusing. There’s also quite a bit of background noise because we were in an auto body shop at the high school and I recorded some of it during a break in the meeting. And these guys are a very chatty group with a lot to say!
Kate: Can I get your name?
Jim: Jim Payne.
Kate: Okay, so you're the president of the Southern Arizona Woodturners, right?
Jim: That’s correct.
Kate: Can tell me about how you all got started? And when?
Jim: I know that years ago they used to meet at Raytheon. A lot of these guys are ex-engineers from Raytheon. Or ex-employees or used to work out there. I'm not sure how we got here because Ken Tower was the ex-school teacher from this school. That's how we got in here. I don't know why they left Raytheon. But originally that group of turners, mostly woodturners, started out there.
Kate: Okay, so explain to me what do mean by wood turning? What does that mean?
Jim: Wood turning has been around for a really long time because if you look at old chairs and stuff, they have the spindles. Spindles on the legs, spindles on the back. All that stuff is usually turned, even if it was turned by hand.
Kate: So, it's all by hand, no?
Jim: So now we have machines that you can put it between, turn it on, and then can still have to do the shapes. You can decide on the shapes and the angles and all that kind of thing.
Kate: When did you start doing this kind of work?
Jim: Well, I took all this stuff in high school. I actually went to school here in Flowing Wells.
Kate; Oh you didi? Okay
Jim: In fact, when I went to school here, this was my wood shop. We're meeting in now, this is now the auto shop.
Kate: Do you remember your teacher?
Jim: I do. Mr. Bausch. Ken Tower came a couple years after the high kid. After I left, I wanted to be a woodshop teacher. But I just never finished. Back then you had to go to either NAU or ASU.
Kate: To become a teacher.
Jim: I started in high school. I went to Pima for a years, thinking that I was going to continue, but just didn't. Then got married, had kids, all the wood shop stuff got pushed to the side and all of my kids were leaving, and I got time, my daughter got me a gift certificate to Woodcraft. I went up there and here. It was just hard. I live right around the corner. So, it was hard for me to drive to Raytheon and to go to a meeting.
Kate: Yeah, that’s pretty far.
Jim: I'd heard about it, but I've been I think involved about ten years now. When I saw the sign that said they meet at Flowing Wells High school. So I came here.
Kate: That's great. So, what do you like about doing this?
Jim: Just the people.
Kate: That's why you come?
Jim: People who ? and then we'd branch out and see all these other people. I now play Santa Claus at Christmas time. To go to the schools, so it's just fine people that are, like the same stuff you do.
Kate: Yeah, you learn from them. What kind of things do you learn from each other, I guess, at these meetings?
Jim: I'm sorry. You want to sit here? I mean, we have different demos. Most folks have a demo. This one just happens to be on child safety because we just finished with Christmas and stuff that’s, how you determine how big and all that kind of. But we usually have something to do with wood. Last week, last month here, we did what's called a one board bowl, and that's where they were talking where you cut it out on a band saw and then stack it up and glue it. It's just, it's endless in what things we can do with wood and now we're even, we even started another club that's an offshoot of both of them that does CNC, 3D printing, all the new stuff that kids are involved in.
Kate: So, there's no woodshop anymore at this school, or most schools.
Jim: They took it away.
Kate: I'm kind of curious if this is kind of a dying thing among younger people?
Jim: Yes and no. I've gotten a better faith of the younger kids. I started doing the culinary arts stuff with the teacher over here and the kids are just awesome. And I've gotten involved with the ag program out here, and those kids are really awesome and they have a lot of shop stuff out there. It's just great to see young people interested in stuff that needs to be done and knowing that they're not going to college and learning a trade. We've actually had kids come either in the morning or in the afternoon. We used to come and turn pens and stuff, teach kids. And it was on their own time.
Kate: On Saturdays?
Jim: They would come and learn how to do wood stuff.
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Kate: Okay, so your name is John. So, tell me how you got started with woodworking.
John: Well, my father did a little handy work around the house. And I just, he wasn't very good. I had a couple uncles build houses. But you know, I just was always around do-it-yourselfers. Because this was back in the ‘50s and ‘60s where things were do-it-yourselfers.
Kate: Where did you grow up?
John: Where did I grow up? Upstate New York.
Kate: Okay, so you're retired.
John: Yeah, and so I didn't do any woodworking until, actually, I guess I got married and had a place. Little things need to be done. And then it just progressed until more. I don't make anything big anymore. All my big stuff I made, tables, we don't need anymore. But now it's all little stuff. And now it's all giveaway because we don't need anything else at this point in our life.
But what I did do is back in New York, I taught woodworking to girls. It was called the Girls’ Club at the time. It's now called Girls Incorporated. They wanted a part-time woodworker to teach girls how to build things. So, what I started is I had third graders. They started with me, and we started little tool, little cutting, and a little saw, and a little drilling. And I had these girls progress up to 17 years old when they graduated high school. They were making Adirondack chairs and things. The same kids that stayed with me. And some kids were newer every year. So, I started that program over there and kept it going for quite a few years. I was with them for maybe twelve.
Terry: That’s how John got all this gray hair.
John: Yeah, really. 12 or 13 years. And I was all self-taught. I didn't have any special training. I continued with it. And so I don't know now I'm course no longer in contact but, you know, but these kids are probably have some basics on how to do things. I remember them being more confident. The whole idea was to build girls confidence to do things, and woodworking was a non-traditional girl's, woman's tool.
So, this is what we did. Like I said, we had a room, and I had seven or eight kids out of an hour a day, two hours a day teaching them how to do things. And I just had to break it down to them to be simplified that they could understand it.
Kate: So, then you, when did you move here?
John: Moved here about fifteen years ago or so. I sold all my woodworking tools back in New York. Back in New York, I had tools and I had nobody else. I was not in a club. I was just making things, doing things. And so, since the tools were out in the garage and rusted, I just left them all behind. Came up over here, moved to here, and my mother who did live a long life, well, she needed a present. What do you get somebody who's 90 or 85 years old? So, I said to my wife, “Well, I could make her something, but I have to buy a tool. I don't have any tools. Have to buy a tool.”
“Okay, well, yeah, buy a tool.” Anything for I don't have to make a decision, my wife thought. Bought one tool, bought another tool, bought another tool, then bought a Shopsmith around the corner.
And then I said, okay, I used to turn back in New York. Let me see if there's a club here and there was a turnings club here and that's why I started coming here to this to these clubs because I got the help because if you don't sometimes know what you're doing, like for example, if you don't know if your tool is sharp or if it’s you that's making the mistake. It could be your tool is dull and that's why you can't do this certain thing.
So, this is where getting help comes in and that's where the club came in. This club has helped me with that and then I got some lessons from one of the members and then just the conversation. Also, I think the clubs help with the challenge. Well, that's kind of nice. I never thought of that. I'll go home and try that, or I'll look at that I'll talk to that person more about it I think that's what the club is doing for you.
Kate: Yeah, that's great. So that's what you like best is learning from other people?
John: Yeah, yeah and I like also teaching back because I also belong to a place called Xerocraft, which is a makerspace where we have tools, and I like when somebody comes in and says, “I don't know what to do. I want to do something.”
Like, we have a young lady she's about maybe 25 and she comes in and she works with younger kids, and she wants and she wants to build something so, “What do you want to build?”
“I don't know,” she says. “But I want this. I want this.” So she, you know, she's learning tools, and I like teaching her because then she gets more confident.
Every couple weeks she comes in. It's like, “Well we're going to use a nail gun today.” Alright, a nail gun, that sounds kind of interesting. A nail gun is kind of a fun tool to work with. She nail gunned all her little ornaments on this tree she was making. I like to give back in terms of teaching that part.
Kate: That sounds really fun. Thank you.
John: That's all I got. Talk to him.
Terry: I was an engineer at Hughes Aircraft. What's your name?
Terry: Terry Glover.
Kate: Oh, sorry. I know your wife.
Terry: Do you? You know Pat?
Kate: From the League of Women Voters.
Terry: Oh, yeah. So, when I was at Hughes, we had a club called the Woodchippers. And this club was actually founded in like ‘89. Sam is our historian, and he has the details, but there was a member who was an owner of a Shopsmith store. And then they met there originally. And when he sold the store, the store went out of business, they came to you and asked us if we could host them. So that was about, I don't know, the exact year, again, Sam has the actual history. He was our historian for a while. So, that was in the early 90s.
And then in 2005 is when a few of the Desert Woodcrafters members came to me and asked could we also host them, host another club that focused on turning. And that's when the Southern Arizona Woodturners Association began.
Kate: This group was earlier?
Terry: They were 2005 and like I said, Desert Woodcrafters been together since the late ‘80s. I believe it's ‘89. I have the logo with the actual founded in date that I can send you if you want. Anyways, so Sam's art has probably the most history. He and Dennis Coyle, who's out on sick leave right now, were actually two of the founding members. So that'll give you some background. Okay? All right.
Kate: Okay
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Kate: Okay, so I'm here with Curt. So, when did you first get into woodworking? Or woodturning, I guess.
Curt: Well, woodworking itself was back when I was very young. We did stuff around the house, but my uncle was a woodshop teacher and so, he would always have woodworking things to do when I was around. And the one thing that he got me interested in was an aspect of woodworking called marquetry, which is essentially making a picture using thin pieces of veneer.
And it's similar to inlay, only, it's very thin. And so, I did that. I used that for a lot of different things up until, well, kids came along. Then all of sudden, woodworking, all that other stuff went on the backburner until, pretty much, until I retired. One of the things that I had said when I retired, I wanted to learn how to turn pens. So went to some classes, learned how to do that, kind of got into very rudimentary woodturning. Then I kind of expanded back out to some of the things that I used to do when I was much younger.
Kate: Okay, are you from Tucson? Or did you move here later?
Curt: I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and moved here in 1982.
Kate: So you’ve been here a while.
Curt: And the one thing that, one of those expansion type things, is the person who was cutting the doodle boxes, the laser cutting them, said, “Okay, I'm done.”
And they were looking for somebody to do that. I'd never used a laser cutter before. Very familiar with computer stuff but not using laser cutter. So I said, “I'll give it a try.” And now that's the thing I enjoy doing is the challenges of trying to figure out the ways to make it work.
Kate: How does that work exactly? I’ve never seen one of those before.
Curt: Basically, it's a laser that is pointed down and it's on three axes. I mean, the X axis and Y axis and the Z axis, and it basically uses the X and Y that Z is just to focus it getting it the right distance away and then it just, based on what the computer design is telling the laser head to move, it moves along the whatever.
Kate: Whatever you tell it to?
Curt: And burns through it. It's actually burning through it. Whatever you tell them to do.
Kate: So how do you, what's the computer stuff look like? How do you enter that in?
Curt: If you think of a lot of the design software like Adobe Illustrator and so forth, you can create, manipulate and so forth to get a pattern and then in our case we import it into LightBurn which is an allay set of software that converts that into essentially the instructions that go to the laser cutter to tell it what to do.
Kate: Okay, what's your favorite kind of things to make?
Curt: Typically, it's small items. I'm not a furniture maker. I don't have the tools for that. I don't have the space for that. Goodness knows I've made hundreds and hundreds of pens now. But like I said, a lot of small stuff. Now, I've been making some cutting boards because I've a bunch of leftover wood here. Some toys. I think I just found a source for the little 3D puzzles that are just like you stick together and they make like a dinosaur, or they make. And I can put the pattern in, and I can cut one of those in a couple of minutes and instead of paying the 25 or 30 dollars that, you know, to get it commercially.
Kate: That's great. Did your family like it? Did you give stuff to your family?
Curt: They’re done with me. There's the things that I can make, you know, that they've wanted. They've gotten, you know, my youngest daughter wanted a, what appears to be a three-dimensional looking cutting board. Never done one of those before, but, you know, I said okay. I'll work and put one of those together.
The biggest thing that I get requests from the family really is more my wife wanting me to cut out templates for her quilting stuff. She goes, “You can make for next to nothing something that's going to cost me 25 bucks at the quilting store.”
Kate: That’s great.
Curt: Well, and then, of course, with her, as soon as she get one and she sees how well it works, then she shows it to all of her quilting buddies and all of a sudden, I'm making a dozen of them.
Kate: That's nice, that's nice. They should make you something you could use.
Curt: Oh, they do.
Kate: That’s great. Okay, well thank you.
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Kate: When did you start doing woodworking?
Bob: Well, I started with my grandfather when I was when you were a kid. But when I retired and then moved down here, I started to get excited about woodturning, lathe turning. And somebody told me about the meeting, next week's meeting, the SAZWA. And so, I came down to that meeting, met a gentleman that teaches, kind of a professional turner. And so, I met him the next day I was out at his house, and for three years I went to continuous classes with him because I just loved it.
Now, I'm kind of where I want to be with that, but I also joined the DWA, this meeting, just because of the different computer work they do and I'm terrible at computers. So anyway, but I ended up, they ended up kind of drafting me to go down to Xerocraft where a lot of the guys volunteer, and most of the guys go down there and do, and I was brought down there because they needed somebody to be their fire safety manager. I'm their volunteer fire safety manager now, and it sounds like next month, I'm going to be giving a little demo on extinguisher maintenance for this group because we're discovering though all the things that I found at Xerocraft that were wrong and dangerous a lot of the guys have those issues in their shops to.
Kate: What do you think are some good fire safety tips for anybody who is doing this kind of stuff? I mean, I know there's a lot, but do you have any really important ones?
Bob: My gosh, well, Everybody, most people have a fire extinguisher available in their woodshop, but they don't realize that you have to do things to it. You have to have them checked, but you have to turn them over. And I do the ones out at Xerocraft now on a monthly basis. I turn them over and use a rubber hammer on them to loosen the powder up so it flows in there rather than being chunky. Extension cords are terrible in woodshops and Xerocraft had a large issue with a lot of extension cords too.
Anyway, that, and then the other gentleman mentioned the flammable finishes that people use. Anything linseed oil based doesn't need to be lit on fire if it's in a somewhat non-contained it can just self-ignite.
Kate; Oh wow, okay.
Bob: Anyway, there's things like that and just the amount of sawdust that is gathered up into anybody's woodshop.
Kate: It’s flammable.
Bob: And not only that but it's bad to breathe. The dust control is really important in a shop that you're using a lot.
Kate: Thanks. Those are great tips. So, what kind of stuff do you like to make?
Bob: I've done hundreds of wood turnings. I'm not in this for money. I give it away to friends. I've also done a lot of cutting boards, multi-dimensional cutting boards. I'm not really into furniture making unless.
Kate: It seems like most people here aren’t.
Bob: Well, we have one of the guys is that he wasn't here today, but he and he's into the old-fashioned things too. He does with hand planes to finish them. No, I'm just about interested in anything. I decided I wanted to get into the computerized stuff, and I bought a really nice computer CNC machine, and then I detested using it and it wasn't successful, so I actually sold it to Jim and his son for a lot less than I paid for it but because it just wasn't my thing because you're standing and watching it do the work. I want to be the one that's making the sawdust. That's what I did. I learned to, watched my grandfather cut the tip of his finger off with his table saw when I was about eight years old.
Kate: That must have been scary.
Bob: I've always been into safety. In 34 years in the fire department.
Kate: Where were you a firefighter.
Bob: Up in the city of Renton, Washington.
Kate: Winton?
Bob: Renton. Renton. Right next to Seattle. It's where a big Boeing plant was and things like that. Wonderful, absolutely the best career for me that I could ever have.
Kate: Yeah, interesting.
Bob: I retired after 34 years I was a station captain which was what my goal was from the beginning. I wanted to become a captain just because I respected the people that taught me in the academies.
Kate: That's great. Now you can use those skills now even when you're retired.
Bob: Well, yeah, and that was, I didn't realize that I was going to do that. Terry Glover was the one that talked to me when he realized at one of these meetings that I had the history and he said, “Well, do you have certifications?”
And I said, “Well, yeah, but they're all expired.” So, but I still had the experience and so, I'm really happy that they invited me out there because there was some serious hazards.
Kate: What was the group they said where they burned down. The building burned down? That ghost something? Did you hear that guy say that?
Bob: No, I didn’t.
Kate: He said there was some makerspace group where their building.
Bob: That was some other town. No, no, it wasn't here. But yeah, mean there's, there was several areas that I discovered that were hazardous and there's still some things that are not fixed yet. Not necessarily the fire hazards, but they're in a historic building down there. It's over a hundred years old. And so, the exiting in the basement is not what it should be. It doesn't have panic hardware and things like that. So, they're working with the building owner to try to get that taken care of. Every week that I go down there, I inspect and make sure that there's nothing blocking the exits and things like that.
And there was batteries were dead in emergency exit lighting and things like that. You don't know that because they'll work if the power is on, but as soon as the power goes out, they have a little test button. So, I go around every month and I put a ladder up underneath them and push the test button and just stuff like that. It's basic stuff from a fire perspective, but not from the Xerocraft perspective. They didn't have anybody that was.
Kate: They weren’t thinking about that.
Bob: So anyway, it really makes me feel good and then Adrian and Bud, they're there. I'm out there on Wednesday because that's one of the days that they're all out there, too.
Kate: Yeah, you like to see them again too. Like a club.
Bob: Yeah, it's like the coffee table at the fire station. Yeah, just but everybody there has different background. see them again too.
Kate: Yeah, different skills.
Bob: That's the amazing part because I got nothing in computer work and Adrian is a computer wizard and he's an electronics wizard too. And Bud is the same with electronics too. So anyway, that's about it. It's just a good place where those of us that are getting on in years can get together and feel like.
Kate: You’re doing something. You’re accomplishing a lot. Well, thank you.
Bob: You're very welcome.
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Kate: I'm here with Bud, who's the president of this group. So, I've been asking everybody when you first started doing woodworking.
Bud: I come from a family of urban barn raisers. So, in my youth, I was basically the gopher. Go get more nails, go get boards. Never allowed to actually participate in anything. And by the time I was old enough to do that, basically all the people had built on their additions or garages or whatever. So, I never actually got to go do anything. So, I became.
Kate: You just got to watch.
Bud: I just got to watch. But I got into woodworking seriously when I retired about ten years ago. I live in a retirement community with a woodshop there.
Kate: Where's that?
Bud: Quail Creek is the subdivision down in Green Valley. Not knowing anything, just joined the club, had a couple of projects I wanted to work on, and had all sorts of mentors. So, I was able to learn from an experienced cabinetmaker, an experienced home builder, people with all types of skills, experienced lathe runners. And I just enjoyed it. And because I was retired, I had time to join the board down there and try and figure out how we're going to get the club to grow and move forward.
Kate: They have their own board and everything.
Bud: Yes, for that club down there, right. And when I was there, I just heard from other members of that club about the existence of Desert Woodcrafters and Southern Arizona Woodturners. So, we would carpool up here on weekends and participate in the club. And frankly, I joined with these clubs and stayed with these clubs because of the camaraderie of the organization. I just found a bunch of people I just really enjoy spending time with and working with them. I always love doing charity work, volunteering, and the fact that these clubs do so much charity work just.
Kate: It’s really incredible.
Bud: That really drew me into it. I'm not too sure I do any of them very well, but I do a little bit of everything.
Kate: So how long have you been president?
Bud: 15 months.
Kate: Okay, how long is your term? Is it two years?
Bud: It's a one-year term, but whoever is in the position gets re-elected. It's a, yeah.
Kate: So, you have other positions too, you have like a secretary and treasurer and all that?
Bud: Yeah, so our board consists of four named positions, so president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer. And then we have three people in ad hoc or open positions. One of them doesn't really have to stand for reelection because the past president gets punished by being an open board member for the next three years just to carry forward some continuity in the group. So, Frank is our past president. He's always in coaching me through whatever he's done in the past, what's worked well or not well.
Kate: You run the meetings here.
Bud: Basically, run the meetings, make sure the other board members are getting their job done. For some reason, it's always been the president doing the budget rather than the treasurer, so I get to do that. And then coordinate with the Southern Arizona Woodturners on what we're doing.
Kate: Okay. So, what do you like to make?
Bud: I tend to dabble in the 3D arena. I've got access to a CNC machine, do a lot of CNC work.
Kate: What does that stand for?
Bud: Computer numerical control. The software is called, it's a CAD CAM program, typically engineering work. They've come out with versions that are oriented towards woodworking. So, it's CAD for the design CAM is the what do want to tell the machine to do and then after that there's a machine control step that actually takes your instructions and feed it to a machine, actually do the cutting. So, I do a lot of two-sided 3D work.
I'll use an example I've got three grandchildren. All of them play soccer. So, one Christmas I decided I was going to make them each a bowl but I did a soccer ball motif on the inside and outside of the bowl so they've got a bowl which when you're looking at it almost looks like you've cut a soccer ball in half.
Kate: That’s fun.
Bud: And that dragged me into I now teach CNC classes both at Quail Creek in the community but then also an organization that a number of us belong to called Xerocraft which is a city of Tucson makerspace.
Kate: What do you teach? You teach the computer stuff?
Bud: I teach the software side. I show people how to use the hardware, but we've got more experienced people on building and repairing hardware.
Kate: Yeah, so what else, I know Xerocraft, do woodworking, what other kinds of things. They do a lot of different.
Bud: So Xerocraft’s pretty much, it's called a makerspace, sometimes called a hackerspace. But, so, woodworking, metalwork, welding, they have a radio station, jewelry studio, sewing classes, cooking classes. It's pretty much every kind of shop that they should have in high schools or make available in high schools but don't have. So it's open to the community. I'll say half, half of the staffing or more than half of the staffing for woodlays, metalways, and general woodworking come from our two clubs. There's a lot of intersection.
Kate: How much does it cost to join Xerocraft?
Bud: Xerocraft, you can do monthly. I think it's $60. We have quarterly and they have annual dues. A little bit expensive sounding, but it gives you access to every one of them.
Kate: You get to do everything?
Bud: Every one of the shops. So, if you've got a project that crosses all of the shops, they have 3D printing, vinyl cutting, laser engraving. It’s a true bargain. I know a number of the people that I do CNC work from will join for a month and they'll save up their projects for a half year and they'll come in, and they'll hit most of the shops to get it done.
Kate: Yeah. What does your group cost to join? This one, the Desert Woodcrafters?
Bud: We’re $35 a year for a membership.
Kate: That’s a good deal.
Bud: It is a deal for a year, and there's an awful lot of knowledge you can get for $35. And then, again, to me it's the camaraderie of the members and getting together, sharing what they know.
Kate: Yeah, how many members belong to the group?
Adrian: 30?
Bud: We have 40 for us and about 60. And if it's not, 40 plus 60, so there's probably 80 between the two clubs.
Kate: That's great. It’s a good group.
Bud: Yes it is.
Kate: Okay, is there anything else you want to tell us about being president or?
Bud: No.
Kate: No?
Bud: You should talk to Adrian Barton about being vice president. That is the hard job. I just have to run the meetings. The vice president's in charge of getting all the demos set up and finding demos that are interesting, but more importantly not only interesting, but can get done in 20 minutes and be meaningful. It's probably the tough side of it.
Kate: You think you have the harder job.
Adrian: Yeah, nobody wants to be vice president.
Bud: Nobody wants to be vice president. I wouldn't be president except he said he'll be vice. He volunteers to be vice president if I'll be president.
Adrian: We're in our second term.
Bud: We're in our second term, and I'm sure we'll get elected for a third term.
Ken: The other club has a two-year limit. This club says you could be a lifetime member.
Kate: Lifetime president?
Bud: Yes. Stay as long as you want.
Jim: They flex the years to it. They don't have any volunteers like this year.
Adrian: How long have you been treasurer?
Jim: This, probably now forever. Five or six or seven years now. And I only did it temporary because the guy got six.
Kate: And then now you're for life.
Bud: Yes, treasure for life.
Ken: And that's the only reason you're the president is because you're the only one that didn't say no right away.
Jim: He said, I'll put your name on the list. Well, my name was the only one.
Ken: Yeah, but you're doing a good job. Much better than in the past.
Kate: Good, that's good to know. Adrian, how did you start getting into woodworking?
Adrian: I've always been into woodworking.
Kate: Since you were a kid?
Adrian: I never had work the time. But in my previous career, I didn't have much time. So I made some very nice pieces of furniture. It didn't just take me a year. Because I'd get one day a month or something. But once I retired, I got into all kinds of stuff, and I had no idea that I was going to be 3D printing. I mean that was.
Kate: It wasn't on your radar.
Adrian: And laser stuff. That hadn't even crossed one mind.
Jim: Yeah, I remember coming to a meeting one time and Terry Glover saying, you know, we should have a CNC offshoot of the club so we can do CNC work. Adrian decides, well, okay, so we've got CNC, the same technology is used for 3D printers, we should get into 3D printing. So now we engrave half the stuff we send out to other organizations.
Kate: So, you're a former engineer, right?
Adrian: Engineering technician.
Kate: Okay. So does that help you in?
Adrian: Oh yeah. I was a controls guy, learning the new controls was relatively easy. But if I had to do this professionally, I'd be in trouble.
Kate: Why?
Adrian: Just because there's this stuff. I get that over my head a lot. A lot of times.
Bud: and he's being modest. He gets in over his head, but then he goes off on his own, he figures out how to do it, and he ends up teaching the rest of us.
Adrian: Yeah, but because it's not a million-dollar project, it's okay if I get in over my head. But if I was back to what I used to do, you know working on five to ten million dollar pieces of machinery and I'm in over my head. We're all in trouble. Yeah, that's a problem. Yeah.
Kate: Yeah, I like when they were talking before about mistakes, you know. You can fix your mistakes, I guess. It's a good lesson. So what kind of stuff do you like to make?
Adrian: Well, we've been doing cutting boards and charcuterie boards. It's the latest thing. I've got a bunch of, I’m going to call it scrap. It's just rough-cut walnut that I've had for years. So, it's not good for furniture because it's all twisted up. So, small projects. I want to do some beads of courage boxes. Just finding the time. And then you want those to be good quality because it can’t just be nailed together like a birdhouse. Because some little kid is going to be. It's dealing with other things.
Jim: Yeah, it has bigger problems, yeah. And particularly since some of those kids end up using the boxes as a, in the worst-case scenario, some of the kids who don't make it, their parents will use the box as a memorial for the beads and other items that they want to maintain. So, it's gotta be good work.
Adrian: I've seen some of the stuff that Ken's turned out, t the beads of courage.
Kate: Ken should come over here. So, Ken is, I heard that you were a woodshop teacher?
Ken: Yeah, I was the woodshop drafting teacher here for 30 years.
Kate: So, how did you get into doing that work?
Ken: Well, I was working this dead-end job in a machine shop after I graduated from college, and I came home all grumpy every day and my wife said, “You know, you need to make a change.”
We had a friend who taught auto shop in Seattle, and he said after I graduate, “You got all the skills. You teach any of the shop classes.”
And I said, “I can't teach auto shop.”
He said, “Yeah, but you can teach woodshop, or you can teach drafting. You have a degree in architecture. I mean good grief.” I went back to the NAU and got my teaching certificate and then I got hired here, and I just stayed here forever.
Kate: Yeah. So, what did you like about teaching?
Ken: Well, teaching was great fun because you never, there was no routine or rut. You didn't do the same exact. If you thought you were going to do something that day, then there was a pretty darn good chance that you were going to up a little different stuff because something happens, and kids ask different kinds of questions, and everybody wants to make something different. You had to be able to be able to help them do whatever they were in the middle of.
Kate: Yeah. So what year was that when you started?
Ken: ’79.
Kate: Oh wow.
Ken: And then when I retired, a neighbor. I think he knew my son. Anyway, he contacted me and said, “How about you come down to the woodworking club that meets at Raytheon?” Okay, sounds like something to do. And then I found out, you know, there's a bunch of great guys. You can share ideas, and you can make stuff and maybe every once in a while you win some money. This is just fun for old guys like us.
Kate: So, you taught for how many years?
Ken: 30.
Kate: 30 years.
Ken: That's sort of the magic number. If you can do 30 years, you get a full pension.
Kate: Yeah, what did your students, what did they like doing? Did they have favorite things, or projects?
Ken: We made a little bit of everything. In the advanced class, I always had them do a group project and this neighborhood is lower middle-class stuff, and they didn't have the opportunity to make anything expensive. But as a group project, we made cedar chests, and we made armoires one year. We made these decorative ice boxes, and big pieces, and we sold them. And it funded the after-school activities. And then they got to find out what a really nice piece of furniture looked like.
That that was then after the maybe first whole semester. After that, they got whatever they wanted to make. I had some people donate wood and stuff so, my last three years I never charged them anything for it. They could make anything they wanted. It was completely free because I had been building up piles of everything people would donate. By the time I retired, I still have big piles of stuff but we used most of it up.
Kate: Okay. So there's no woodshop class now. What happened with that?
Ken: No. After I retired, I don't think they looked very hard, but they hired the guy who built the sets in the drama department, and he just wasn't up to the job. They finally kind of.
Kate: They just phased it out?
Ken: The enrollment started to dwindle, and finally, they closed it down.
Kate: Okay, are there other opportunities for kids to learn somewhere else, like outside of school or?
Ken: In woodworking there is hardly anything left. CEO had a carpentry program the last I knew. And JTED has a carpentry program through Sunnyside. So, there are some opportunities, but you've got to look hard. The kid has to want to move in that direction. They don’t just get to go to school and then they can just sign up. Now you actually have to plan ahead.
But they can, and then some schools, this one has a powerful automotive program, and they have photography, and they have junior ROTC is a big deal here. Each school, if they can find a teacher, that's the key. They have to find somebody that wants to run that program, and they want to do good things and if they do good things the kids will hear about it. And they’ll come on in.
Kate: During this meeting, you were showing some things. Can you explain? Explain what those are?
Ken: Everyone has a role. One of my roles. I've been kind of backing off. I've done the beads of courage and I've done the purple heart pens. I'm backed off from that, and they’ve gotten some other people involved, but they still want me to do the show and tell.
Kate: That was show and tell. Okay.
Ken: Yes, I guess I do a good job on show and tell. Basically all I do is I try to look at every one, and say something good about it, because otherwise people won't bring things in. And it's not hard to say good things about things that we saw today. That one jewelry box. He spent a lot of time and a lot of effort on that. He needs to get a pat on the back. He's an experienced woodworker. He's brand new to the club. But you can tell he's done work a long time. And then everybody does different things. Sometimes it's a toy, sometimes it's something a little more serious.
Kate: What were those things that you were showing over there? What was that called?
Ken: Well, that's the president's choice.
Kate: Like an assignment, kind of?
Ken: So, Bud chooses a project. Like in February, it had to do something, woodworking had to do with love. So, there were a lot of heart-shaped things. Next month, he works really hard for the Christmas party to get donations from the vendors. Now he says, “You know, we need to use them that the vendors give us and then give them some props, because they're donating hundreds of dollars worth of stuff that the vendors give some props because worth of stuff. The least we can do is use it, and send them an email saying thanks.”
Well, this was the main thing, was the two by four contest. We do that every year. But other people brought in pens that they make, and other people brought in, it was a Beads of Courage box. And gosh, I can't remember, but everything's welcome.
Kate: What was that thing called that somebody won that toy and then that person has the bring something back?
Ken: That's the bringback.
Kate: The bringback. That's what that was called. Okay.
Ken: If you win that drawing, you get whatever the person brought back from last month that won from that drawing, and then you’re required to bring something next month to donate. I always thought, well, this is pretty easy to do. But we had a guest turner in the other club three months ago, and she’s from San Diego, and her club, their club, they simply refused to bring something back. And I thought, why is that? They don't want to participate. But she said, “We tried, and we tried, and we finally gave up. So, we don't do that.” And I looked around our club and I said, “We got better people than they got.” I guess.
Kate: Do you belong to any other groups? Xerocraft and all that?
Ken: I belong to the turners’ club as well as this one. They need me real badly because I have the keys to the shop.
Kate: That’s right. I figured it was you.
Ken: That's really my only qualification. I go to Xerocraft only when I want to use their skills. Somebody wants something like a cremains urn, something that I have to make periodically. And so, I'll lay it out, and before I’ll assemble it, I'll take it down and John Nicholson, he's the best. He'll look at it ,and I'll have sort of written out what it needs to say but he’s going to put a nature scene on there, along with the name and the dates kind of thing. He goes on that laptop and in about five minutes he'll have something and say, “Well how do you like that?”
And I go, “Oh boy, that's just great.” And then he'll burn that. It'll take a day or two and then I'll put the urn together and we’ll give it to the person.
Two years ago, we had kind of a run of members that were, anyway, I had to make four in a row.
Kate: That's a nice special thing to do.
Ken: Yeah, we're all older guys. This is going to happen to all of us. And we used to make American flag boxes for that same thing. We've stopped making those. But if somebody requests something, then we will make it for them and we will not charge them.
Kate: That's wonderful. I'm so surprised to see this big list of all the projects you do in the community. It's such a wonderful thing, I think, especially for kids to see something handmade. You know, that's really unique and special.
Ken: Well, you know, when they get a little toy for Christmas, get to take it home. That's fun when the kid picks up the toy, he thinks that he's just going to play with it then and there. And then they get to take it home? The teacher usually says, “You know, you get to take it home.”
And they get this huge smile. And they just can't believe it. They say, “Really?” What happens to it after that, I don't know. But they play to heck with the toys. They play hard with those toys.
Kate: Well, do you have anything else to tell us?
Ken: No, no, no, you're doing great.
Kate: Well, thank you.
Ken: I don't know what you're going to do with all this. You'll have your kind of fun.
Kate: Yes, I will.
Thanks again to all the guys that I interviewed from the Desert Woodcrafters Association. If you're interested in joining this group, their website is desertwoodcrafters.com. They have a fundraising luncheon auction coming up on April 5th that everybody is welcome to go to. The other groups that were mentioned in this interview include the Southern Arizona Woodturners Association. Their website is sazwa.org and Xerocraft, which is spelled X-E-R-O-C-R-A-F-T dot org.
If you don't live in Tucson but you're interested in joining a woodturning group, you should check out the American Association of Woodturners at woodturner.org. So thanks again to everybody who let me interview them. They were a terrific bunch of people who are so fascinating. I knew nothing about woodturning or really wood crafting in general besides the shop class I took in seventh grade. So it was really exciting and fun for me to get to know these people and to see what they do.
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