I was born on November 23, 1942 in Boone, Iowa. My father loved wood working. He completely remodeled our house, added rooms, built furniture etc. He also made custom made cabinets for some of the more affluent homes in town. I picked up my father's love of woodworking, and enjoyed working on many projects. I enjoyed designing the project, planning out how to make it, and then making it. What I hated, however, was sanding the wood in preparation for a finish. When I was in High School, I discovered the wood lathe, which gave me a whole new dimension to the art of woodworking. What was actually amazing about it was that you can hold the sandpaper still, and the wood moves. WOW! Unfortunately, there's only so many trowel handles and candle stick holders you can make.
On my first day at Iowa State, I was walking past the billiards room in the Student Union when someone broke a rack of pool balls, and I said to myself "What was that wonderful sound?". I investigated, and saw the first pool table that I had ever seen. I fell in love with it immediately. It has ruled my life ever since.
After about one year, I bought a Willie Hoppe Cue Stick sold by Brunswick. I thought I was in Heaven. One day, I decided to modify my cue so I drilled some small holes in it, and glued in some rhinestones. I'm sure it would look tacky today, but someone else liked it enough to steal it.
I graduated as an Electrical Engineer and started working at McDonnell Aircraft Company on June 6, 1966 (6/6/66). My first assignment was to design an umbilical cable for one of the Gemini astronauts to use while doing a "space walk".
From this assignment, I went on to design the Power Distribution System for the Skylab program. After that, I was assigned to work on classified Air Force Space Systems. This assignment required me to move to Sunnyvale, California.
I had a day off, and drove to North Hollywood where cue maker Bert Schrager lived. I needed a new ferrule on my cue, and he agreed to do the job for me. While watching him work, the old "I gotta do that someday" feeling came over me. I watched him trim the ferrule on a Metal Lathe. This was a machine that I had never been around, and is perfect for cue making. When Bert showed me around his shop, I saw many machines that put most of the pieces of puzzle together for me. I now knew that I would DEFINITELY do this someday. "Someday" was still over 10 years away, however.
In 1982, McDonnell Douglas had a contract to support NASA in Houston, Texas.
My dream of making cues was still alive, but after looking into it further, I realized that it was much more complicated than just putting the pieces together. Wood has to be properly aged, turned down in stages to relief the internal stresses, and sealed properly to prevent it from warping. The right type of glues had to be used. If you use the wrong glue on certain woods, the cue won't hold up. It will develop buzzes and rattles. There was also the problem of finding good sources for wood and other materials. I finally made a decision. I set a goal of being able to make a cue that a pro player would buy and play with by the time that I could retire from McDonnell Douglas. This was 9 years away. I figured it would provide me with a good retirement income. It also meant that I could work for weeks on a cue and if it didn't turn out right, I would not really lose anything when I had to throw it away, which happened more times than I want to think about. I had a local pro player playing with one of my cues within one year, 8 years ahead of schedule. From there, I experimented with more and more complicated designs, pushing myself to perfect my techniques, and to develop new ones.