Hey there, I'm blogging!

Hello,
My name is Larry. I am a woodworker, as you may have guessed by the title of the blog. I make things with wood and sometimes give them as gifts and also attempt to sell them. I have had some success but it's still a learning process...as is blogging. I have a Facebook page, you guessed it, MLC Woodworks (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/MLC-Woodworks/139250176089610); and a shop on Etsy.com at http://mlcwoodworks.etsy.com. You can also get there through my domain http://www.mlcwoodworks.com. I plan to set up a website at mlcwoodworks.com some day but don't know when that will happen.
I've been exposed to woodworking all of my life. My dad was a cabinet maker and later became an architect. The cabinet shop he owned was before I was born or at least before I was old enough to know about it. What I remember is after we moved from California to Georgia in 1957 when I was 2. There, he worked at Athens Lumber Company in Athens, Georgia. Sometime in the 60's he went to school to learn architecture and from then on until his passing in 1990 he was drawing plans for houses, apartments, banks, shopping centers, and just about anything else you can think of around the Athens area. He also acted as a contractor in the sense that he had the crews that he knew he could trust to do the job the way he wanted and he would visit the jobs regularly to make sure it was done right. He wouldn't have just anyone work on his jobs, and his reputation around town showed that he was very particular with the quality of the work he put his name on.
I have been dabbling in woodworking all of my life but didn't really start getting into it seriously until the past 13 years or so. After high school I spent 8 years in the Navy learning and working in electronics. When I got out in 1981 I went to work for a large multinational company who made typesetting equipment and later moved into general graphic arts equipment. My job was installing, repairing, maintaining and training customers on the operation of that equipment. It ranged from large(44 inch wide film) laser imagesetters to scanners to computer based editing systems to photographic film processors to printers. I spent 15+ years doing that but started having problems with my knee in the early 90's. By '96 I had essentially burnt out both physically and mentally and spent 2 years out on disablilty. In hindsight, I should have changed jobs 5 to 10 years earlier but kept trying to take care of my customers. I finally had to leave it, and them. When I went back to work I shifted gears and went to work in a cabinet shop. I really enjoyed that until the workload started getting to my knee again after a couple of years. I found I wasn't able to work the long hours that I and my boss wanted . We came to an agreement on my limitations and things would have been fine if my boss had learned one simple thing. You can't get away with lying to your customers, or your landlord. Lies will always come back and bite you in the ass. In this case, the landlord shut us down one day and I was again out of work. After a few months on unemployment I went to work at another shop making custom entry doors. That was quite interesting and I was enjoying it and learning a lot, but personality conflicts with the boss ended that after a couple of months. During that time and afterward I had been trying to start up my own shop. I'd been buying equipment for my basement shop and I had a few jobs here and there but the knee still caused me problems that limited the amount of work I was able to do. I ended up having to pass on several jobs that could have been real money-makers.
As it is now, I'm able to work in short stints, resting frequently. In the last 3 years or so I've gotten into wood turning, starting with turning pens and then expanding to bowls when I got a slightly larger lathe for my birthday about a year ago. Now I wish I could get a bigger one. Some day... but my shop isn't real big and it is very crowded so I don't know where I'd put a bigger lathe. I have a lot of wood that I got from the cabinet shop where I worked. My boss kept throwing stuff out that I just couldn't see going to waste, so I would just throw it into the back of my truck. I've gone through a lot of it but still have stacks of wood here and there. Unfortunately, because of lack of space, I have tools like a jointer, planer and a oscillating spindle sander that are buried that I have to uncover to use. Most of my tools have to be moved around to some extent to be used, but these three are seriously a pain to get to. That's something that I have to remedy one day soon. But I keep jumping into new projects, another thing that I have to work on.
Well, I just wanted to write a short piece with a brief bio and there I babbled on and on. Oh well, I didn't have anything woodworking related ready yet anyway. My next installment will be a bit more on topic. Since I'm turning bowls now, mostly from green wood, I working out a process for drying the roughed out bowls so that I can finish them off. I've been reading a lot online on the subject and trying different things. I'm on to a process that seems to be working quite well right now. When I get more results I'll write something about that. I've also got a couple of other ideas floating in my head for the future. For now, this is me. You can see samples of my work on my facebook page or on my Etsy shop. Check back here periodically for updates.
Larry
MLC Woodworks