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filler@godaddy.com
About Me
Who am I , and how did I get here?
I am pursuing my dream of woodworking full time after retiring from teaching high school in July 2023. I spent 24 years teaching Physics, Math, and Engineering to junior and senior honors students interested in STEM careers. Prior to teaching, I worked as an electrical engineer at Motorola in Arizona, designing microwave frequency circuits and chips for various applications.
I've always enjoyed creating things and my woodworking journey started in middle school with an elective leather and wood crafting class. When I grew up and started to have kids, the need arose to build shelves and other small projects. I started with a jigsaw, circular saw, and a hand plane. As I tackled new and bigger projects I gradually improved my tools and skills for over 20 years until today. I am by no means and "expert", but I do have a bit of skill from all my experiences.
One big learning phase for me was making wooden practice weapons (sword, staff, knife) for my fellow martial arts practitioners. I made over 100 weapons over the years and sold them around the state and beyond. This was also the genesis for my logo and business name. "Five Rings" refers to the Book of Five Rings, written by the greatest Japanese swordsman of all time, Miyamoto Musashi. The principles outlined in this book made a great impact on how I live my life, and they are studied by many people around the world in business, military and other occupations. If you are interested in this story, I recommend this translation version by Kenji Tokitsu.
During the weapon-making part of my woodworking journey, I moved into a new house that needed a lot of updates. The biggest learning project was the bookshelf and desk I built in my home office. It took me two years to complete a 15 ft long by 10 ft high bookshelf and cabinet system along with a 7 ft long dual-sided peninsula desk. I added a lot of tools and skills in the creation of this project.
Recently, as I neared retirement, I decided to try my hand at the lathe. I already had a lot of experience making pens and pencils for gifts, so I started making those again. After binge-watching way too many bowl-turning videos, I decided it looked like fun. After the first few bowls, I was hooked. And since I was making the bowls I decided to try making videos of them as well, which you can see in my Gallery or on my YouTube Channel.
As part of my engineering teaching at school, I learned how to operate a computer controlled (CNC) router to help my students make very precise assembly jigs for engineering projects. I have taken that knowledge and applied it to designing new projects for my own machine. I have lots of product ideas, but have executed only a few of them so far. Stay tuned!
Finally, after watching way too many epoxy and wood table videos (ok I'm addicted to YouTube), I decided to try my hand at that as well. So far I have made small side tables as wedding gifts for my nieces in recent years. They came out beautifully, so that is also going to be part of what I offer for sale in the future.
Turnings
My favorite woodworking activity is turning on the lathe. I primarily make bowls, but I also offer wooden pens/pencils, and decorative bottle stoppers.
CNC products
To satisfy the engineering part of my mind, I also work with computer designed projects. I have a CNC (computer numerical control) router that can carve projects with high precision to whatever shape I can dream up. Above, you can see a double pen case I designed and machined.