Working with wood, especially turning, has become somewhat of an obsession with me. Like many woodworkers, I seem to have sawdust in my veins. At the very least, splinters in my fingers. And although I have had an interest in woodworking since my youth, it was not a vocation I actively pursued. From the time I cut and nailed some pine boards together to make the proverbial bird house in eighth grade shop class until 1990, I had only made crude utilitarian boxes and bookshelves and such. The summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I worked for a master carpenter on the construction of a new house. Basic skills that would later serve me well for all those home improvement projects.

  It was music and theatre, however, that was eventually to be my profession. The singular pursuit of my acting career became my full time job. Watching The New Yankee Workshop and This Old House was about as close as I got to woodworking.

  In 1990 I was fortunate enough to land my first Broadway show, The Phantom of the Opera. That year I also got my first router. It was a well intentioned, if somewhat impractical gift. Living in a New York City apartment is not really conducive to the use of a router. I kept it in its box for the next four years. When my wife, Liz, and I purchased our first house, I took it out of the box, plugged it in and fired it up! It was not very long thereafter that I began outfitting my garage with power tools.

  Phantom is still my full time job, but my other passion is working wood. Liz and I are now in our second house. My two-car garage is filled to the brim with power tools, hand tools, jigs, materials and sawdust. I am working at the two things I enjoy most.