A native of North Georgia, I grew up next door to my great, great uncle who had been the community blacksmith in the 20’s and 30’s. My first experience working with metal and wood was as a teenager in his small farm shop building cattle head gates of his own design. My interest in metalworking grew after taking machine shop and welding courses in college while studying mechanical engineering. In the mid-seventies, I built my first forge from scrap lumber and Georgia red clay, copying my uncle’s forge. I worked at learning blacksmithing on my own for about 4 years until I discovered the Tullie Smith House blacksmith guild at the Atlanta History Center. There I met a welcoming group that wanted to help a young blacksmith learn. It was through two of my older blacksmithing mentors that I was introduced to EAIA and MWTCA and I joined both in 1983. My wife Pam and I finally attended our first conference in 2006 in Williamsburg, VA and loved it. EAIA conferences have introduced me to many interesting places and museums that I didn’t know existed. I operated my forge as a part time business and at times my full time profession during my career as an engineer in heavy industrial design and construction. For 33 years I worked with an architectural business in Atlanta doing their custom work, making missing parts and restoring antiques including locks, keys and hardware. I do not consider myself a tool collector but a user of antique tools and enjoy tin smithing, hand tool woodworking, machining, as well as smithing. My current interests include restoring and using vintage machine tools of the smaller size and my long term project is building a one eight scale live steam Shay locomotive. We divide our time between our homes in western North Carolina and Williamsburg, VA where I volunteer in the Tin Shop and Pam volunteers in the Weave Shop at Colonial Williamsburg.