Welcome to Euclid's Toolworks

An introduction to Euclid's Toolworks, hand tool woodworking, and the author.

May 22, 2025

Kurt Blues-Andrews: The Mad Computer Scientist

Errr... Not by a long shot, but who can resist a memorable line from a Stones classic? That said, "I've been around for a long, long year..."

My name is Kurt.

You can find me on some of that social media stuff as TheMadComputerScientist.

My Social Bio
Father, husband, mad computer scientist, mathematician, lay theologian, reader, dragon believer, hand tool woodworker—I am the geek squad.

I started my woodworking journey some ten lustrums ago. For those who haven't seen The Duke's version of True Grit, that's almost 50 years. Lustrum—I've always liked that word.

I started woodworking in high school, in the mid to late '70s. I took every woodworking class the school district offered over those four years, along with several drafting and blueprint reading classes. There was one hand-tool-only project in each class, but the main focus was on machine operations. We had the best shop I've ever seen—it put Norm Abram's shop to shame. I wanted so much to make furniture for a living, but I was born with a handicap that made my work slower, and my parents didn't think it was a good idea. I ended up studying electrical engineering at Mizzou for two and a half years, then transferred to computer science, closer to home.

Over the last 45 years, I haven't done much woodworking at all. Right before I got married, I tried to make a coffee table in a shared maker space, but ended up destroying $350 worth of red oak. If you're using shared machines, don't process your nice wood until you've run some junk through the machines. Later, I was successful making some wooden toys for my kids. I was never able to have a real shop of my own—we could never afford the machines or find the space for them.

After all this time, I'm finally ready to tell the corporate overlords to TTJASI—but not yet. I had to push retirement back four more months today. I'm going to need much coffee and some range therapy. Toward the end of 2023, I started thinking about what to do with myself in retirement, so I decided to start a hand tool wood shop. Why hand tools? They're somewhat less expensive, and hand tool operations don't necessarily require a large shop. Do I know much about woodworking with hand tools? No. Most of my experience is with machine processing.

What’s it all about, Alfie?1

It might be about “life, the universe, and everything,” but the answer isn’t 422.

So this is what this Substack is about:

Learning, preserving, and passing along traditional woodworking skills.
Building and outfitting a small wood shop.
Starting a small business (probably, but it's not something I'm likely to talk about much—we'll see).
"The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" that goes along with all of these things. Anybody remember ABC's Wide World of Sports? Now that was entertainment!

In next week's post, kids, we're going to travel back through the mists of time and learn a little about a mathematician!

Written by Burt Bacharach for the film of the same name in 1966. The song became a big hit for Cilla Black and Dionne Warwick (I’m probably dating myself here).

See Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy if you find this to be a confusing non sequitur.