Ciao, my name is Reto, and that’s obviously not exactly a common American first name. I was born and raised in Switzerland. My academic background includes a double-PhD in Math and Finance and teaching finance at MIT and University of Chicago. I served for 18 years in the Swiss military, starting as a radio soldier and driver for the Swiss air force and air defense and retired as a Lt. Cmdr. running recon units for an elite unit. I worked for several Wall Street companies in roles including portfolio manager, head of investments and chief risk officer. Currently, I run my own family office.
When I arrived in the States, I lived in Boston for four years before moving to Chicago in 2004. I am married to my wonderful wife Celeste and together with our Vizsla, Bryce, we live in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago. I am a member of the Chicago Woodturners, the AAW and the Segmented Woodturners.
When I was younger my hobbies included climbing, skiing, diving, canoeing and off-shore sailing. I have a captain’s license for offshore sailing, and crossed the Atlantic, most European countries and sailed north of the polar circle. I have a HAM license, which I haven’t used for ages. One of my best experiences was the rescue-diver education in Gloucester MA; I learned so much about the human behavior in distress. Today my hobbies are my dog, hiking, gardening and … woodworking! I came to woodworking through my mom, she was the artist in our family. She took me to the art center in our village where all the cool tools are. I crafted the face mask in the pictures when I was 8. I did wood carving, bowls, frames and other stuff. When I went to prep school my hobbies shifted to windsurfing and the girls!
My woodshop is in my garage. I use half of a double garage for my hobby. I custom built my work benches with sliding workbenches underneath to increase my surface area and to maximize my limited space. I have most of the necessary tools to work on all kinds of wood projects. My only regret is that I didn’t build the dust collection system first as I had to take apart a few things to eventually build and upgrade my system.
After building all kinds of wood projects, garden planters, frames, furniture etc., I decided to start taking classes at the Chicago School of Woodworking about 9 years ago. Andy Kuby’s classes and his sense for details fit me well and I took more classes, ultimately taking Al Miotke’s segmented vessel class 8 years ago … everything from here is his fault ! The segmented approach fits my sense for details and I like the notion of trying to figure something out that is linked to math, complicated, has a high degree of certainty of flying through the woodshop and at the end looks great and I feel satisfied! Making errors is ok, repeating them is not (I wrote an entire book about that topic). I made a lot of errors in my life; Clint Stevens kindly calls them “design changes”. As long as I figure out what went wrong and how I can improve myself it is part of my learning-curve. I am very impressed by all the woodworkers and how creative they are, and how openly they share their knowledge and tips. I hope I can contribute in my own way to preserve and enhance the creativity, quality and knowledge of these trade skills. During the cold winter-months, I take watercolor-painting classes which has helped to enhance my color-perspective and has good therapeutic value.
I do segmented bowls, single-piece bowls, beads-of courage bowls, pens, furniture, planters, spin tops, honey dippers, handles, … My most recent addition to my shop is a drum sander JWDS-1020 which I hope will increase my efficiency making segmented rings.
