The purpose of this web site is to showcase my current work and to offer
information about different building techniques that I have experience in. I spent
my professional career, over 35 years, working as a computer programmer and analyst in
wholesale distribution and hospital settings. Luckily I had time on the side to
pursue other interests like rasing a family and building my home. From childhood I
have always been interested in building things, and, I hold a strong respect for
craftspeople and the high standards of hand work that mark the small boats of the last
century, for example, and guitars now. I have built 3 geodesic domes, a few
conventional houses, worked in the general carpentry trade, built around 100 guitars and
about 15 small boats. I am now 65 years old.
The dome I built when I was 21, shown above, is now 44 years old and one of the
longest-standing domes I know of - somewhere in this site I hope to explain why mine
out-lasted the others.
I mostly work alone. The output of my shop is not a matter of mass production but a series of individual items that usually are unique. A particular design of a chair for instance I may make repeatedly, but it is more interesting to me to be making something different. Many of the things I make take a long time, like guideboats. A guideboat takes somewhere around 300 hours, most of which is repetition of carefully detailed steps like setting the 5,000 copper tacks that fasten the planking.