Replies

1. 
   WillGeorge | Apr 12, 2005 06:44pm | #1

   I once did a interview (about 5 hours!) with my 'Son-In-Law' for his Doctoral Thesis??.. Whatever...

   I'll NEVER do that again!  LOL.. He is a cool guy but GEEEE!

   Good luck with yours!

2. 
   forestgirl | Apr 12, 2005 07:20pm | #2

   I hope Jason has gotten a response from someone.  C'mon guys n' gals!  Splintie?  Lee?  DanK? 

   forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
   Another proud member of the  "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>) 

3. 
   LeeGrindinger | Apr 12, 2005 07:26pm | #3

   I'd be happy to help you out, Jason, but you're going to have to lower yourself to my level, I don't know how to "pm" anyone..

    

   [email protected]

    

   Lee

   MontanaFest
1. 
   jasonmcbain | Apr 12, 2005 07:34pm | #4

   well talking to some people on a different forum they decided it would be good to just post the q's  and then people could answer right on the forum.

   I will start by telling you all about myself, and how I have decided that I want to design and/or build furniture. While I was growing up my dad and my grand father were woodworkers by hobby. I took many woodshop classes in high school. I graduated in 97 and proceeded to move to Southfield and I attended Lawrence Tech’s school of architecture. I accumulated about 90+ credits and took many design courses including sculpture and furniture design. While going to ltu I worked for an architect and was able to get my hands into much of the profession from design, to dealing with clients and billing. The experience of working in the field soured me on the profession not because of my employer who quite honestly is probably the best employer I have ever had. I had just become disheartened by architecture as a career. While I have lost the want to be an architect the part that I enjoyed the most and still enjoy is design. I especially love furniture design because it Is far closer to art and you are trying to convey and idea or a message rather that trying to solve a problem in building form. Since leaving Ltu about 2 ½ years ago I have gotten married and have had a child. I know am attending Oakland community college for a business management degree after which I plan on attending Wayne state and getting a fine arts degree. In person these questions would not be asked so stiffly and I would be much more casual but this is the internet so now I will get onto the questions. I would appreciate a little background info on those replying also I would also appreciate it if you would answer all questions as honestly as possible 1. What do think made you choose this as your career? 2. Do you have formal education in this or any other field? 3. Could you describe your education, formal or not? 4. When and why did you start your business 5. With what you know now what would you have done differently when you were starting your business? Also what are some things you know about the field that you wish you had known about previously 6. What tips would you give to someone looking to make this their career? 7. What do you think are some disadvantages to your career? 8. I know it is possible to make a living designing and building furniture, so what are some of the most important things to do to make a living doing this? 9. to sum up your profession in one sentence what would you say 10. What do you find to be the one skill you did not have when you started that you wish you had? (business or technical) also elaborate on the questions as much as possible because the due to not actually speaking to each other their is less possibility for more questions to arise out of the answers thankyou again jason Meekhof

    

   ps if you do not want to post all your answers for any reason you can just email me your responses at [email protected]

    

   thanks to all for the help

   Jason meekhof

   Edited 4/12/2005 12:44 pm ET by jasonmcbain

1. 
   LeeGrindinger | Apr 12, 2005 08:45pm | #5

   Wow Jason, that's a belly full of questions. Usually I'm being plied with at least a promise of dinner and drinks out for Ruthie and me by the guy with the recorder, Hah, hah, ha...I'll do it tonight after work and post it then or early tomorrow morning.LeeMontanaFest

2. 
   WillGeorge | Apr 12, 2005 08:49pm | #6

   By the way! You should have started off with this post!

   Well, just a old guy here.. Not sure what you want but my truth as I know it!

   Answers...

   1. I just got back from the Army.. I had a child and she was hungry for food! Wife wanted me to work!

   2. College.. Third year.. Army called!  I hated school then.. After I did NOT HAVE to go to school I LOVED IT.. I still take classes at college.. BUT just what I LIKE!I have fun with the KIDS! They think I'm nuts!

   3. Sort of like 2... Mostly school of hard knocks.. My Son-In-Law is a PHD in Child Education..  He thinks I'm smart???

   4. I always worked for others.. I gave all the best I could do at the time...

   5. Hardly anything..  My LIFE HAS BEEN GOOD.. Well, cept for my wife and best friend dying! I have wonderful children and grand babies.. What else is there?

   6. GO with your dreams.. BUT DO NOT BE AFRAID TO CHANGE!

   7. Showing up for work?

   8. I believe if you have a true ART instinct.. You are half way there.. The other 99% is HARD WORK!

   9. I should have went into something else!  I was a Electrical Engineer and in Marketing... Good at both but.... boring..boring..boring!

   10. I am a person that is self taught. I can do almost anything if I want to do it.. EXCEPT ART!  I love ART!  Just no skills for it.. Gee.. My mother paints in oils.. What happened to me?

   I have a hard time drawing a stick man.. They said in one class 'I can teach Anybody' can draw'..  Well my instructor changed his mind about that!  He was good BUT... me

    

4. 
   LeeGrindinger | Apr 13, 2005 05:52pm | #7

   Here you go, Jason, I told you I have a tendency to spill my guts.

   A quick overview:  I've been in this trade for 30 years.  I began in Colorado, then Salt Lake City, then New York State, then Boise Idaho and finally and at last Montana.  It's been a tough ride but I'd pay my money to go again in an instant.  Ruthie and I have been married for 24 years and we never had kids. 

    

   1. What do think made you choose this as your career?

   I think success breeds interest and interest breeds talent. I grew up in a family of extreme pragmatists, a family that thought blue collar workers and artists (spit this word out) were low life forms that sullied the landscape. I liked building stuff and, even more, taking stuff apart. My parents didn't care for this curiosity so I became a "problem" child. I remember visiting a neighbor's shop, it was in his basement, and I was immediately smitten. Mr. Hudson had a very simple shop as I look back now but it was a world of tremendous fun for me. I was around 12 years old and pestered that poor old man incessantly to go into his basement. He would not allow me to be there alone and he was pretty old so I'm sure he found my zeal exhausting. Screw the kick ball, screw the pick up games of baseball, I wanted to make stuff!

   My parents tolerated this because it kept me out of trouble but they hated it and constantly told me how misplaced my energies were. As high school approached I was still a problem child but the stakes were growing larger as I grew older. In ninth grade I took my first woodshop class. I freakin' loved it!

   In high school I signed up for a vocational cabinetmaker's program. My parents reluctantly tolerated it because they new I was better off in a woodshop than a squad car but they never ceased berating blue collar work and artists. (again, spit this word out) This is when I got really, really lucky. I got a fabulous teacher, his name was Daniel Johns and he saw in me a hungry, smart and devoted kid. Johns took me under his wing and tutored me a lot. The shop teachers supplemented their incomes by using the shop to do work on the side and Johns used to really stretch me by handing me pieces of this work to do, he was no slouch as a woodworker so it was high caliber work. I build a grandfather clock case as a junior in high school. Midway through my junior year a new teacher came on board. Richard Dyer was no less enthusiastic about teaching than Johns and he accepted me as a willing and anxious student. He used to open the shop up in the evenings and I'd badger my way into a ride to the high school from my condescending parents because they knew it was keeping me out of squad cars. I loved being in that workshop, I had 53 absences in English one semester because I was in that workshop-"but my English teacher said it was okay".  I was probably in that shop 40 hours a week.

   So, why did I choose this as my career? Because truthfully, I'm not fit for anything else.

   2. Do you have formal education in this or any other field?

   I've dropped out of college twice now, I hope to do it a few more times before I'm dead. In times of extreme frustration I've looked at other ways to make a living but none filled the hole in my soul. I've always returned to woodworking in short order.

   3. Could you describe your education, formal or not?

   done

   4. When and why did you start your business?

   I never wanted to "start a business", I just wanted to build furniture. I tried "opening a business" once, it failed. We had just moved to Woodstock, New York because it was high time I swam with the big fish. I grew up in Colorado and spent an interminable 13 years in Salt Lake City, Utah trying to sell elaborate furniture to pioneers. I rented commercial space, got the yellow page listing, bought the insurance, the truck, the stationary, the antacids and the coffee and went to work. I went to work at 3 AM because the phone didn't ring at that hour and I could get some work done. I worked until 6 PM, then stumbled home to my neglected but ever supportive wife, ate and crashed. Sunday was my "day off". I'd go in at 3 AM on Sunday but do my work, the stuff I wanted to do, the great furniture I wanted build.  I'd come home at 11 AM to give my wife some "quality time", yeah, right. 

   Well, even a young, driven man can only do this for a limited time, I fell over after 4 years and couldn't get up. Black Monday had wiped out my backlog and the hole was getting deeper. The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop shoveling. So, eventually I stopped shoveling and with a wonderful debt we fled the East to the much lower overhead of the Mountain West. We moved to Boise, ID and I swore to my long suffering wife I'd never drag here through that again. I went back to school and was miserable. After a quarter and a half of college courses I knew there was a huge hole in my soul. One Saturday afternoon my wife and I got stinky drunk and I confided to her that I had to start building things again. Her reply was "It's about f*cking time!" What a great woman, actually Ruthie was the greatest bit of luck I ever recieved..

   Now came another fortuitous turn. I had virtually no tools having sold them all to pay debts. I went to work for a Czech master in Boise. Who knew Boise would have such a person? Rusty (Rostislav) was a product of the Czech guild system and had fled to the US when the communists took over his country. Rusty and I worked together for nearly a year and to this day his compliment to me one day is the one I hold most dear. "Lee, I tell you vhat, you are the only American I've met who could actually do vhat he said he could do." Well, this was a big deal because we Americans have a well deserved inferiority complex about our woodworking. Without the benefit of the guild system we have a very difficult time finding qualified teachers and mentors. Woodworking know-how is hard to come by. On top of that many of us are afraid to share what we know willingly.

   That was my foray into business, and then some.  We've been here in Montana for a dozen years and things have gotten really nice in the past decade.  I suppose they had to, after 30 years of knocking at that door I think I knocked it right off it's hinges.

   5. With what you know now what would you have done differently when you were starting your business? Also what are some things you know about the field that you wish you had known about previously

   I wouldn't change anything I did. Everything I did led me to more knowledge about myself and my trade. I never wanted to start a business, I just wanted to build furniture. My goal was never to own a successful business or to make a lot of money. My goal has been to build great furniture. The business crap is just what I have to endure to make great furniture.

   6. What tips would you give to someone looking to make this their career?

   Don't do it. Simply that. I know what fire in the belly it took to get me where I am which is a very, very modest level of success and I know that if you have that fire there is nothing I could say to deter you. If you lack the determination and stamina you'll most likely end up in a very deep hole with a very bitter heart. There are ways to make money in this trade other than studio furniture making but they are not much fun and those doing it are usually trying to get into the office, or management..., just out of the shop because the work generally sucks. There are exceptions and I'm glad for anyone doing well in this craft.

   But, here's my tip. You get a reputation for what you do, not what you say you can do. If you want to build studio furniture than that's what you'd better do because few clients will believe you can build "that piece" if all they know of you is kitchen cabinets.

   7. What do you think are some disadvantages to your career?

   In retrospect, bad pay, high overhead and long hours, no health benefits, no pension and no paid time off. Other than that it's pretty cool.

   8. I know it is possible to make a living designing and building furniture, so what are some of the most important things to do to make a living doing this?

   Hit the bricks. Get a portfolio, years in and of itself, and hawk yourself to pros like designers and decorators, architects and gallery owners. Kiss frogs ever day and keep kissing until a prince appears, they are almost all frogs but you get used to the taste. Keep your overhead low, I mean really low, like a two car garage if that's what you have, don't buy tools on credit and make do with what you have. Then hope for some great good fortune because talent and perserverence alone isn't enough.  The gods need to smile.

   9. to sum up your profession in one sentence what would you say

   I design and build great furniture.

   10. What do you find to be the one skill you did not have when you started that you wish you had? (business or technical)

   Confidence.

   I'm happy to answer your followups, Jason. I hope you weren't expecting a business plan from me, I'm no businessman.

   Lee

    

   MontanaFest
5. 
   jasonmcbain | Apr 14, 2005 07:46pm | #8

   this has turned into something that i not only want do for class but also something i just want to do to learn about the career

   thanks to lee for doing this for me i really appreciate it and you have the outlook on life that i hope i can maintaing myself

   also thanks to a local pro named dave zaret for meeting with me in  person 

   also thanks to Will George  i really apreciate it

   for any one that wants to see some stuff i have built
   here is a link

   http://home.comcast.net/~jmeekhofweb/wsb/html/view.cgi-photos.html-.html

   
   

   ---

   Edited 4/14/2005 12:49 pm ET by jasonmcbain