My name is Ted Beebe, i’m from Fletcher, Vermont. I grew up in Swanton, Vermont, and attended Champlain College,
then Adams State College of Alamosa, Colorado. After school, I worked in banking in Connecticut for 23 years.

Following that, I returned to Vermont and worked in the home mortgage field for about 20 years. Kathy and I designed and built a house in 2000, and again for the second and last time in 2016. We have 4 children and 4 grandchildren.

We spend 2 or 3 months in Florida each winter, and, need I say, I take a lathe and related projects and tools with us to Florida.

I received my first woodworking tool kit when I was about 8 years old and have been working with wood ever since. I bought my first lathe in about 1975 and barely turned it on until about 2011 or so, a few months after joining our Club. I am primarily self-taught, but have spent a little time with a couple of our mentors, and in particular, I have learned from watching and talking to my friend Russ Fellows. I also have a friend and mentor in our Florida club named Paul Bartlett. Both Russ and Paul do a lot of segmented work and have inspired me to head in that direction.
In Florida, Russ, Paul, I, and a lot of others enter our work in  competition at the Florida National WoodArt Expo, and at the Florida State Fair in Tampa.  Competition has a way of pushing you to a new level.

I sell a little work personally and have work at the Miller’s Thumb Gallery in Greensboro, VT. I’m not a big fan of watching pros do a demo, because we have so much talent in the two clubs to which I belong ( although our Al Stirt is good, and he is enjoyable to listen to). I think that both clubs that I belong to need to do a better job at getting our membership to demonstrate and participate, rather than the usual people figuring out what to demonstrate.

My lathe is a Grizzly 22 X 42. I have had it about 4 years and have been very pleased with it……and yes, 22 inches does come in handy at times. My benchtop lathe that I take to Florida is a General.

I like the idea of moving the sawdust sessions around some. It gives us all a chance to see someone else’s’ shop for new ideas. Another way to accomplish this would be to have a shop tour caravan to visit about 4 shops some Saturday morning.

Our Club has attempted to do personal profiles at other times, and I’m guessing that people did not step us, so it died. Let’s keep this going, so I will start a new system called “TAG”. At the end of a profile, the individual being profiled is asked to select the next person for us to learn a little about. So I “TAG” Jay Bailey, our new President. I would also ask that the person being profiled attach a few pictures of your work …………….this may be the best way, the most memorable way, to get to know our fellow club members.

Last modified: November 14, 2018