Delegate Ken Plum visits GEMS Club Take Apart Zone at NoVa Maker Faire

When asked — on a tour last week to Nova Labs — what he makes, Delegate Ken Plum quipped, “I make mischief in Richmond.” But don’t let that fool you. Delegate Plum is a Veteran Maker. On the tour with Co-Founder and President Brian Jacoby, he was knowledgeable and curious.

The Virginia House of Delegates is comprised of 100 members elected from districts throughout the state. Plum is in his thirty-third year of service representing the 36th District.

Delegate Plum grew up in Shenandoah, Virginia. His proudest makes, he says, were a “digger” machine (like a back hoe that he could use to dig in the sand along the creek bank) and numerous machines and buildings constructed with his Erector set.

As a high school student, he was part of a team that built rockets (from scratch – before the Estes kits). They constructed the fuselage, nose cone, and nozzle out of metal parts, after calculating the size of the nozzle orifice. Next time you see Delegate Plum speaking about Richmond mischief, ask him what happened with those rockets.