Alin Dobra

I am a Computer Science Professor (assistant professor actually) at University of Florida and I spend my professional life doing some teaching and a lot of research (see my professional website at www.cise.ufl.edu/~adobra if you are curious).

As opposed to most people that get good with woodworking, I did not work with wood all my life and, as a matter of fact, until I got my Ph.D in Computer Science, I had little time for any hobby or even handy work. My father is a very good handyman though and my grandfather was a carpenter at home and a machine supervisor at a mill most of his life. Neither of them taught me any woodworking since getting a good education seemed more important at the time.

I started working with wood only in 2004 when my wife suggested I build some bookshelves (she owns about 4000 books). After acquiring some tools (the first real one a Grizzly table saw in the summer of 2005) I started getting more ambitious with my projects. In the fall of 2005 I discovered Kelley Mahler's video on building a shaker table. After that there was no going back since this lead to hand tools, hand cut dovetails, etc. In Spring 2006 I purchased a small Jet lathe to use for the occasional turning for furniture making (or so I thought). One year and a half latter, I still have to do some serious spindle turning. Instead I discovered woodturned bowls and I specialized in natural edge end grain bowls.

I am a self-taught woodworker (lots of books from the library and Fine Woodworking articles). In any case, I'm way too impatient to take a class anymore (I have been taking classes for 22 years so it is understandable).
I am mostly working in the weekends and afternoons, trying to balance family life and passion for wood. What attracts me towards woodworking is th fact that it is the exact opposite of my professional activities. It requires a lot of physical work, patience for seemingly boring tasks and concrete thinking as opposed to highly abstract, very intellectually demanding and mostly sedentary work I have to do as a computer scientist. Nothing relaxes me more than two hours spend in the garage working on a project after writing papers full of math and talking to students all day. The fact that my woodwork is very accessible -- my scientific work really is not since very few people get to ever understand it and appreciate the finer points of it -- allowed me to interact with significantly more people, people that I would have never talked to otherwise. I find no greater satisfaction than showing a piece of my work to new acquaintance and see them marvel.

-- -- Alin Dobra, Gainesville, Florida