rgbivens
Member
Hello everyone,
My name is Grant Bivens and I'm 27 years old (28 on May 1st) and live in Oklahoma City. I'm a Web Developer and work for a non-profit organization managing around 30 websites.
I started turning when I was about 13. My father was a bank loan officer and had a client who owned a wood mill in central Oklahoma and they mentioned they made wood pens. I've always been the type to tinker with things and have always been very interested in making things. My father told them about me and they invited me to come out to their mill and turn a pen. The first pen I made was a slimline of course and I'm pretty sure it was ugly but it was my first one.
After that my parents bought me a Jet mini lathe, a delta drill press, and some slimline and cigar pen kits to get me started making pens in a little pen business. I made a bunch and sold a few and then I got to the point where I would rather do other things than turn. So my lathe started collecting dust. Then I went off to college and didn't turn anything for a good 4 years. I got a job right out of college and lived in a small apartment which obviously wasn't conducive for turning. My wife transferred schools so we moved to Oklahoma City and bought a house. At that point my grandfather who had been storing my lathe in his wood shop brought it to me. That's been about three years ago. It sit out in the garage for two years and then I finally got it out one day and started messing around with it.
One night I found an old slimline kit in one of the boxes my grandfather brought with the lathe and set out to turn a pen that night. I took it in and showed my wife and she (who had never seen one of my pens) thought it was "so cool."
I started turning a few more things and then stumbled across fool4peppers YouTube channel on how to pour PR (fool4peppers's channel - YouTube). I thought I had to try that for sure and did and it's really made me want to get back into turning more.
That's enough about me for now I suppose. I've been creeping on the forum for a few weeks and finally joined and figured I should probably post here to introduce myself. I look forward to learning a lot from everyone here and hope I can help others as well!
My name is Grant Bivens and I'm 27 years old (28 on May 1st) and live in Oklahoma City. I'm a Web Developer and work for a non-profit organization managing around 30 websites.
I started turning when I was about 13. My father was a bank loan officer and had a client who owned a wood mill in central Oklahoma and they mentioned they made wood pens. I've always been the type to tinker with things and have always been very interested in making things. My father told them about me and they invited me to come out to their mill and turn a pen. The first pen I made was a slimline of course and I'm pretty sure it was ugly but it was my first one.
After that my parents bought me a Jet mini lathe, a delta drill press, and some slimline and cigar pen kits to get me started making pens in a little pen business. I made a bunch and sold a few and then I got to the point where I would rather do other things than turn. So my lathe started collecting dust. Then I went off to college and didn't turn anything for a good 4 years. I got a job right out of college and lived in a small apartment which obviously wasn't conducive for turning. My wife transferred schools so we moved to Oklahoma City and bought a house. At that point my grandfather who had been storing my lathe in his wood shop brought it to me. That's been about three years ago. It sit out in the garage for two years and then I finally got it out one day and started messing around with it.
One night I found an old slimline kit in one of the boxes my grandfather brought with the lathe and set out to turn a pen that night. I took it in and showed my wife and she (who had never seen one of my pens) thought it was "so cool."
I started turning a few more things and then stumbled across fool4peppers YouTube channel on how to pour PR (fool4peppers's channel - YouTube). I thought I had to try that for sure and did and it's really made me want to get back into turning more.
That's enough about me for now I suppose. I've been creeping on the forum for a few weeks and finally joined and figured I should probably post here to introduce myself. I look forward to learning a lot from everyone here and hope I can help others as well!
