About

I grew up in the college town of Kent, Ohio and in the early 1970s I left college. My career as a woodworker began when the band I played bass in needed cabinets for our PA system. The drummer and I made what we needed, were impressed with the finished products and we went into business making speaker cabinets for other bands and local music stores. That business didn’t last, but the spark to make things from wood was ignited.

I spent the next decade in a number of related jobs including building scenery for a theme park, repair of wood boats on Lake Erie, and a commercial cabinet shop. In the early 1980s I was laid off from the cabinet shop and spent the next several years making my own designs and selling them at art shows around the country. Eventually I returned to the world of commercial cabinetmaking while building furniture (and other things) on the side. During this time I became enamored of the work of Gustav Stickley. At the end of this phase of my career I was a project manager in charge of large residential and commercial projects for a large architectural millwork company.

As I learned the trade I read everything I could get my hands on, and my favorite books were books of measured drawings. I expected that sooner of later someone would produce a book of drawings about furniture from the Arts & Crafts period. After nearly 20 years of waiting for the book I envisioned to appear, I decided that maybe I should be the one to research/draw/write one.

In the late 1990s I began and my first book “Shop Drawings for Craftsman Furniture” was published in 2001, followed by other books. That led to a new career path and in 2004 I went to work for Popular Woodworking magazine where I was executive editor/project illustrator. After 10 years I left the magazine to work independently. In 2018 I became editor of American Period Furniture, the annual journal of the Society of American Period Furniture Makers.

I often refer to myself as a juggler. I build, write, teach and publish about making nice things from a wonderful and renewable resource. There aren’t enough hours in the day for everything that interests me.