I came to woodworking sideways — I was a bike mechanic for most of my twenties, and one winter I decided to build a bench to work at instead of buying one. That bench was terrible. The next one was better. I have been chasing the next one ever since. These days I build commissioned furniture out of a small shop in Southeast Portland and teach here at Past Lives most months. My work is mostly Shaker and Windsor in spirit: simple forms, honest joints, and finishes you can repair with a rag instead of a spray booth. I teach hand tools first, always. Not out of nostalgia — a machine will happily make forty identical mistakes before you notice, where a chisel tells you immediately when your layout was wrong. Once you can cut a joint by hand, every powered shortcut in the shop makes sense, and you know what "good enough" actually looks like. My classes run small and slow. Expect to spend real time on sharpening, expect to make a mistake or two on purpose so you learn the fix, and expect to leave with something you'd actually put in your house.