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Mark Bushinski, with his daughter on the slide that he made for her.
Congratulations to Mark Bushinski of Minneapolis, Minn.! Mark was chosen as the winner of the Popular Woodworking Magazine 2017 Workshop Makeover Giveaway. Mark won a new workshop stocked with more than $9,200 of tools from Jet, Bessey and Woodpeckers.
Mark, where do you live and what is your occupation?
I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with my wife and two children. I am 35 years old and work for the state as a groundwater hydrologist.
Share with us about your woodworking background.
I started to enjoy woodworking during high school woodshop class. I built two nicely done chessboards and one ugly clock. My father helped me with some projects around this time too, including a small bathroom cabinet and some speaker boxes. The majority of my projects in the last 20 years have been speaker boxes, generally made from Baltic birch plywood. With some help, I built the sound system for my wedding and also built four tower speakers for my cousin and myself that have an interior partition that forms a seven foot folded bass horn.
Speaker with walnut trim.
Which piece of machinery are you most excited about?
I am excited to use the band saw and planer. I have been researching how to resaw wood but I don’t own a planer, so I wasn’t sure that the end result would look OK.
Mark’s current shop.
What is the first big project you’ll start with your new shop?
We plan to turn a porch into a mudroom this summer, so my next project will be building benches and a coat rack for the mudroom. After this, I would like to help my 13-year-old son build some speaker boxes and plan to make to make some puzzles for my 2-year-old daughter.
Here are some supplies and tools we find essential in our everyday work around the shop. We may receive a commission from sales referred by our links; however, we have carefully selected these products for their usefulness and quality.
Mark, congratulations with this opportunity to use these great woodworking tools. You now have all the necessary machines and tools to mill lumber straight, flat and square. Let your imagine fly so that you can make things and objects that will match your dreams. Sharing the experience of making things with your son can become a great bonding experience. You will gain the positive thrill of seeing your own handi-work take shape and form. Wonderful lifetime memories and heirloom projects are waiting to be made.
You will find that there is a great community of woodworkers available to assist you with any task. Join a group online and a local club, if you can find one. You will discover that there are many people with super talents and skills very willing to guide you in this great adventure.
First and foremost work safely. If some task “feels” unsafe, then it is. Stop. See if there is a different way to perform that task. Do not rush a task especially when you feel tired. You will always want to be very alert when operating power equipment.
Best of all wishes to you. Enjoy working wood.
A huge thumbs up for you, Mark. Congrads. It looks like life just got a bit better for you.
Congrats Mark… looks like it couldn’t have been won by a better choice. By all means. please let us see the finished shop, and some of the projects that come out of it.
–jim