With my BFA in graphic design from Indiana University of Pennsylvania stuffed between a typewriter case and a box of bike tools, I pointed my 1980 Ford Fiesta towards the Rockies with a plan to land in Boulder, CO to race duathlons. I was a regional-level competitor for 12 years, ultimately competing in two long-distance world championships.

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In 1990, I answered an ad for a production assistant at a tiny-but-growing wood products manufacturing company, where I learned the basics of woodworking through trial and error and discovered that I relished solving problems.

Persistence became a habit, then a reflex. I took the determination I acquired from racing and put it to work at work.

After 9 1/2 years of dozens of improvised machines and devices under my tool belt, I went solo and began building cabinets and furniture at my home shop. I eventually moved into site work as a trim carpenter and cabinet installer known for fabricating unique solutions to oddball problems no one else would touch.

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As an independent, solo contractor, I needed a more capable platform than the typical set of sawhorses with an old door or sheet of CDX tossed across them. I drank the green Kool-Aid and bought a worktable from "that" revered German company. Almost immediately, I was disappointed by its impractical size, flimsiness, and lack of reliable accuracy. It swam around under me while I was trying to work. Not helpful.

After struggling with that table for almost two years and seeing nothing else better on the horizon, I determined that if anyone were going to do it, it would have to be me.

‍Idealistic? Sure. Naive? Yeah. Probably unworkable because it was just me and I had zero help to design and bring a large, complicated product to market? No question.

Anyway, I’ll spare you the excruciating details of the last ten years of imagining, prototyping, testing, re-imagining, refining, re-testing, verifying, trademarking, and patenting that followed. Our small, dynamic company is excited to share the results of that work with you: Dash-Board Portable Workshop.