After Ross left school he served an apprenticeship in an Iron foundry as an electrical engineer, and then joined the Royal Air Force, where he remained for 10 years. On leaving the airforce he got into the microchip making business and spent the next 15 years travelling the world extensively, and living in a variety of countries. He moved to Canada in 2004 and at this time started to look for a hobby to fill in his spare time. While scouring art & craft sites he stumbled across the woodburner.com web site. He was fascinated by the skill the artists who post in that site displayed, and decided to try his hand at it.

He started out burning with a Walnut Hollow pen, on some 1" thick oak that was lying around (oak not recommended for the beginner, as it is very grainy, thus it is very soft one moment, and like marble the next, making even shading very difficult to achieve). But he loved the feeling he got trying to get shading & detail etc into a piece using just a hot tip of what basically is a soldering iron. He persevered, and found new easier types of wood to burn on and learnt from studying the work of other pyrographers.