I am sad to say that our dear friend Ed Moore has passed away!

When I spoke with him last, he was able to tell me that he was battling and he was feeling good. I also remember to have mentioned that I did NOT have one single turning from him. He asked me what did I want… I said to him: If I am going to ask, send me that gorgeous black walnut bowl you have on your website. He then replied: Well, if is still here I will send it to you.

Paulo Marin

I remember when I was once again getting ready to re-launch Glaser Hitec tools and designing the website, I decided to look for past comments about Jerry’s accomplishments. I ran into a wonderful review written by a man named Ed Moore.

When I contacted Ed to ask for his permission to reproduce his review, I had no idea on how talented and influential Ed has been in the woodturning community. The more I talked to him, the more I realized that Ed was not only a kind and decent person, he was als0 a mentor to several well known turners as well..

Ed was also a great mentor for the folks at John C. Campbell school, where he showed people how to turn fantastic Christmas Ornaments and other beautiful projects.
I never had a chance to attend one of Ed’s classes, but people I spoke to, have share with me their excitement and satisfaction.

There’s a longstanding tradition of woodworking in Ed Moore’s family – from generations past it is being carried on beyond him by one of his sons today. Yet little did Ed know that turning gifts for his grandfather when he was young would lead to him becoming an accomplished woodturner later in life. Serious woodworking for Ed began in the seventies while he was a mathematics professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and he still remembers the excitement when the first issue of Fine Woodworking Magazine came out. A close professional association with EI Design, the designers of choice in the Annapolis area, gave Ed an opportunity to make many interesting pieces of furniture over a period of eight to ten years. One notably elegant piece Ed made, shown below, was a Hepplewhite inlaid mahogany vitrine that contains the memorabilia of the Maryland Court of Appeals, which is Maryland’s highest court. In 1978, Ed wrote an article on the construction and veneering of a Parsons table that appeared in Fine Woodworking. Later Ed wrote a second article for FW on Shop Math. One of his tables was selected for Design Book Two.

Family interests took Ed out of the shop for awhile and when he returned his thoughts shifted towards woodturning. As a result he joined two clubs, Capital Area Woodturners and Chesapeake Woodturners. These clubs afforded Ed a chance to do two well-received demonstrations for the Renwick Museum of the Smithsonian Institute. A show held by the Chesapeake club exposed Ed’s work to a collector of burls, who later commissioned Ed to make a hollow-form from a piece of Afzelia Xylocarpa burl. This piece, pictured below, was prominently displayed when the collector’s burls appeared in a special show at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts.

The year 2002 was momentous for Ed and his wife Carolyn as they each retired and moved to Burnt Chimney, Virginia, to pursue their respective crafts. Ed quickly established membership in the Blue Ridge Woodturners and discovered that a few in that group lived near him in the vicinity of Smith Mountain Lake. In 2004, after having settled into their new community, several significant events occurred: Ed was designated as Professor Emeritus by the Naval Academy and the Smith Mountain Lake Woodturners club was formed. Ed has served as Program Director of SMLW and has hosted Skill Enhancement sessions for them in his shop. The growth of the club in numbers and the improved skills of the members have been very gratifying.

Ed’s work has focused on natural-edged bowls, turned boxes, small bowls and plates, and ornaments. Domestic hardwoods from downed trees destined for the woodpile are used for the natural-edged bowls. As Ed harvests the oak, cherry, walnut, ambrosia maple, and elm, discovering a burl on the tree is like finding a pearl in an oyster.

I am proud and honored to be able to call Ed my personal ELF. He is a great guy and I certainly treasure him as a friend and one of the best woodturners I know. I encourage you to visit Ed’s website to learn more about him and to see his beautiful accomplishments as a woodturner and woodworker. There is not enough space in this website to showcase his beautiful  creations.

I love you Ed Moore!

Your Friend Paulo!

My name is Al Geller and I live in the Ventura County, California. I belong to the Channel Islands Woodturners, a woodturning club originally established in October, 2002.
I first met Jerry Glaser in the early 1990’s at the Glendale Woodturning Guild when he gave a talk about metallurgy, sharpening and his tool designs.  My first Glaser Hitec gouge was a Bob Stocksdale gouge.  Jerry later came out with his Hitec  CPM10V (A-11)  tool steel gouges and I purchased several of these.  My all time favorite is still the 3/8” fluted bowl gouge.  In the mid 1990’s Jerry invented his stainless steel screw for screw chucks.  These were to be carefully mounted into a wooden block by the wood turner and made holding wood easy and safe.  I have two of these chucks.  You can now buy a universal type Glaser screw chuck to mount almost any size of wood blank for your lathe.  They are a great improvement.
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by HOWARD LEWIN

During the past few decades there has been a revolution in woodturning tools, from lathes and chucks to gouges and boring bars. As a result, what once was deemed difficult or even impossible to turn has become commonplace. In the area of hollow-vessel turning, two innovators stand out. The first is David Ellsworth, who in the 1970s began turning vessels with small openings. His first tools were scrapers he had bent with a welding torch. Later he developed longer-handled tools with swivel tips that held machinist’s tool bits. These offered more control and safety and could produce a wider variety of enclosed vessel forms. Jerry Glaser, an aerospace engineer and hobbyist wood turner, took the ball from there, working to reduce the long tool’s tendency to catch and jerk downward. He came up with a double articulating tip that swivels to place the cutting edge at the tool’s centerline. Other variations continue to emerge, making new vessel forms possible. I use a Glaser-designed boring bar for my hollow-vessel work.
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Interestingly enough, Jerry Glaser never had any intention of becoming a tool manufacturer. Even after his friend Bob Stocksdale asked him to manufacture a spindle gouge Jerry tried to show the British manufacturers the advantage of using powder metals.

When he received no reply, Jerry decided that the time was right to apply his engineering skills and develop what would become the best woodturning tools on the planet.

When asked about his beginnings, Jerry Glaser is extremely humble about it… he states: “I don’t believe I made any major contributions to the hobby… I was having fun!”

I cannot express the delight I feel when working with a genius like Jerry Glaser.

To start, his house is a gallery of woodturnings, puzzles, books, woodturnings and most importantly Sam Maloof’s beautiful rocking chairs. Jerry keeps his brain occupied on a daily basis with a large variety of activities which I absolutely believe is what keeps his brain sharp at such an advanced age.

When I inquire of Jerry his past accomplishments, it is amazing to see the clarity from which he speaks about his developments and experiences. While driving back from a visit to our facility Jerry was explaining to me how he decided to contact the British manufacturers about his newly discovered CPM steels. Not only did he write them a letter, but he also send samples of the product. To his amazement, he received no reply, which was the catalyst for Jerry to start manufacturing his superb woodturning tools. As Sam Maloof quoted: We were lucky that Jerry decided to be a toolmaker…