First things first, I'm a craftsman...
Nice aluminum handled pipe wrench Al's got there.
Yes, and I am too. Multiple disciplines. Wood since age 13. Exotic hard woods I'm a bit ashamed to say. Bone, brass and copper too. I excelled at 3D inlays of bone and abalone.
A welder since age 17. But the mechanical work started at age 11. The entire honda 50 engine including the 3 speed trans was apart and together within 10 months. At 13 a 55 4 door Chevy wagon with a 265 came along. It's power glide 3:60 gears and 2 barrel were replaced with 4:11s, a three speed on the tree and a 4 barrel.
By 25 I was doing lots of geometry and trig building trick gates, installing big v8's in old 40's & 50's trucks and busses.
A 75 foot double masted, gaff rigged schooner previously owned by Errol Flynn got the benefit of my wood working skills and welding as it had a steel framework under a pine plank hull with teak deck and mahogany galley.
In there somewhere fiberglass skills of mold making and fabrication provided work when I needed that.
But free form wood sculpture as an art captured hundreds of hours of time. See my avatar. That is not a Borg appendage off my right shoulder. It is a highly polished ceanothis burl which got first place in a 1974 sculptors guild show here.
But the craftsmanship and artistry was all consolidated in the business of
grading (some youtube videos linked), heavy equipment operation, long hours, high pay. Big diesel powered chisels. Soon augmented with 3D control over job sites. Helping owners from the topo phase, through the grading and drainage plans, certified by a civil engineer I teamed with went for 30 years without ever making a business card. All repeat and referral business.
But still, a 6 inch crescent wrench with my fathers name engraved in it, along with a few other tools I still have of his are my most prized hand tools.
Both grandfathers were master craftsman. One trained in the Swedish army as a master blacksmith, the other, one of the last master carpenters in America that could layout and build a spiral staircase with only a framing square and hand tools.
Artistry, craftsmanship and quality are things I live and breath. This extends into original music all composed and played in open G. It extends into video production and 2.5 hours of historical documentary produced from 2005 through 2009. All broadcast hundreds of times on public access TV.
In 1998 a need for lawsuits arose. As a pro se litigant I've taken on the impossible, not succeeded by any means, but dented the armor of corruption enough so the evil vessel of power transporting us to hell is not catching air like its dark masters want, and it's taking on water in vital holds.
Function, craftsmanship, art and beauty, these are devotions I know.