Hello world!

Welcome to my blog! This little chunk of the web will be dedicated to a hobby that I have wanted to learn for a very long time. I have yet to build anything of substance but I somehow know this is something I am going to enjoy. Woodworking, the idea of making useful stuff from a material provided by nature, appeals to me from both the creative and natural perspectives. The only problem is that I have no idea what I am doing. What I am finding though is that there is a wealth of woodworking knowledge online. When I first started getting more serious about starting this hobby I was shocked to see just how much information there is available and much of it is free. So, as I figure it all out I'll be sharing my experiences and posting some pictures along the way.

But before we to get any of that, a little about myself. I am happily married to an amazing woman who has given me two beautiful boys. We live a seemingly typical lifestyle that is family driven and revolves our young kids (ages 2 and 4). I work as a network engineer (IT guy) for a large-ish company in Massachusetts while my wife stays at home and does a great job of managing the goat rodeo.

It would seem that living on a single salary and having little free time is not conducive to taking up a hobby. Money is certainly tight for us and free time is at a premium, but so far I have been able to assemble the beginnings of a meager work shop in our garage and I work in it at night after everyone else is asleep. This equates to an hour and a half to two hours on most nights. And because I want to spend as much time as possible with the family, getting significant time during the day in the shop on the weekends isn't common. Hence the "off hours" blog title and url.

No one else in my family is in to woodworking. My father wasn't very handy and while both my grandfathers were, neither would be considered a woodworker. Can I claim Norm Abram as an uncle? I'm a big fan of his shows and can probably blame him for my bug.

That's the gist of my background. My first few posts will about some of my favorite online woodworking resources, my beginner's tools and how I managed to acquire them on the cheap as well as my first projects. We'll see how this blogging things goes with the hopes of it adding to my enjoyment and education and maybe even helping other noobs out. Thanks for reading!

Jim