How I Got Started

Starting out on this journey I never imagined I would be selling my crafts at a craft show. I guess stranger things have happened. It was a dream of mine to do and now I am living that dream. It didn’t start out this way and it took me several years to get here. It shouldn’t have taken me as long as it did but I drug my feet and procrastinated.

So how did I get started. Well, I started out in my garage in Florida. I had always had an interest in woodworking. I took wood shop in 7th grade and enjoyed the projects we had to build. After that, I never built a craft project until I got married and moved to Florida. My wife does all the painting and she is very good at it. We also purchased numerous crafting magazines and books which gave way too many pointers to follow.

A good friend of ours did wood working and I admired his work. I thought to myself that I could do that. It looked easy and all I needed to do was buy a scroll saw. How hard could that be? Let me tell you, if you don’t really know what you are looking at, you could get overwhelmed. Which one should I buy? How much should I spend? The list goes on and on… At this point I really wasn’t sure what to do.

Eventually I settled on a scroll saw. I went to Home Depot and purchased some wood. With scroll saw and lumber in hand I began to play around with cutting things out. We started out with small items. Something easy we could finish in a couple of days. If I remember correctly, they were maybe small ornaments or wooden pieces that would sit on a shelf.

Then one day at the mall, I stopped to watch someone demo an all in one machine. This thing could do it all. The way he switched from the table saw to the band saw to the planner. He had me sold. I needed this. This was an all in one work shop, wood workers dream. I grabbed some literature on it and did a little research. Next thing I knew, i ordered it and it was shipped. I had just purchased a Shop Smith.

Now, if you are just starting out, and have no power tools to your name, this is cool. I researched what the cost of each individual item would cost and this seemed to be the way to go. It had a table saw, band saw, planer, disc sander and a drill press all in one. You can even buy other attachments to go with it. I was in heaven.

When it got to the house I couldn’t wait to start using it. I mostly ended up using the band saw. We start out with the bears and outfits. Everyone we talked to wanted one of these. Mainly it was everyone we worked with. Not sure how many I sold that first year but it was money coming in finally. I still make one or two now and then. I also made a couple of bird feeders with this device.

Being that I was in the military, it was hard doing this full time. I would work on things on the weekend when I could. My wife did all of the painting. She was able to learn a lot from the different books and magazines we purchased over time. I ended up keeping the Shop Smith for about 4 or 5 years before I sold it to a neighbor. We had gotten orders to Hawaii and I wasn’t sure of where we were going to live and if there would be room for it over there.

That’s all for now. I will continue on in another episode when I have time Thanks again for reading my blog. Also please feel free to visit my social media pages through the links provided in the menus.