Making Something Out of Nothing. What’s Next?

A friend of mine used to say that if there was and easy way, or a hard way, to do something… I will always choose the hard way.

Last fall I decided to try being a vendor at the Portland Saturday Market. Partly just to see if I could actually sell my products, but partly to get feedback about the whole wine rack idea, examples of my design ideas and craftsmanship. I told myself I would give it a year to see how the Market could work for me. If I didn’t try, I wouldn’t really know how it worked.

Above: A piece of fire wood I pulled from a stack. It’s some kind of fruit wood, maybe Apple, but could be from a Plum or Pear tree. Below: I cut some highly figured pieces of Black Walnut, this Apple log and contrasting pieces of Alder. then I cut a tongue and groove with my IPM Machine on a router table with up-cut solid carbide spiral bit.

The red and blue crayon marks are to tell me to route either a tongue or groove.

I tried to organize the pieces so that the grain pattern continues in order through contrasting light/dark pattern.

This experiment in joinery has one more row than the first top I made two months ago. People seeing this first wine rack top said, “Look Honey, we could play chess and drink wine!” I hadn’t even thought of that in terms of  it’s graphic representation. I was just trying to make a big top out of small scraps of wood. This time around I added another row to make it look more like a real chess/checker board. I would need two additional rows to actually play a game on it, but this time it looks more like a game board. Because the tops are rectangular, the “squares” wouldn’t turn out square.

It is very time-consuming and tedious to machine parts and glue this up. Adding two more rows so it was a real game board would just add more work.

I still might try it some day but I need to drop back and punt as they say. For me the game is to design things around “FREE” material. It would be too easy to design beautiful, complicated woodworking ideas and just go to the lumber yard and buy expensive, highly figured exotic materials. In the end, I still need to sell them. That is the trick.

One of my neighbors at the shop gave me a two huge planks of some kind of tropical hardwood. He got it from a friend that works at a big wholesale lumber importer. In an inventory they found three big planks covered in dust at the back of the warehouse. Not knowing where the lumber came from or what it was, the friend gave it to my neighbor, who after a while had no use for it. So, it came to me. It is very hard, heavy and dense beautiful material. I used it for legs and rather than cut up big pieces of material, I used off-cuts and rips of Alder wood from my furniture building neighbors to make the racks.

KTW #1610a

It was a beautiful warm summer Saturday and the Market was pretty packed. Just as I hoped, hundreds of people were sucked into my little experiment! I can’t say it enough… If I had a nickel for every person that rubbed the tops, I wouldn’t have to sell them!!! Literally hundreds of people stopped to look at these two pieces and tell me that my craftsmanship was like art work. Great, just what I don’t need to hear anymore.

KTW #1610b

Above: You can see my first “checker board” top in the back. In close to three months, I still haven’t been able to sell it. Despite being told repeatedly that my prices were “very reasonable” or “too cheap”. I chopped fifty bucks off the price of it this day and still didn’t sell it! I tagged the two new pieces at $175 and reduced the prices of everything else at least $25. Very few folks looked at my other pieces or the checker topped piece in back for $125. I handed out a huge stack of business cards, flyers and talked to more people than I can remember about building them custom racks. Not only did I not sell one thing all day, but I never got a single call or e-mail for custom work.

KTW 1610b detail of top

Above: Traditionally styled bread board ends made from Sapele, and the through tenons are Australian Lacewood.

So, I’m coming up on one year of doing the Portland Saturday Market. What have I learned? Expensive lessons:

#1  The only people who are making money at the PSM is the PSM.

#2  Most of the PSM vendors are barely scraping by and many of vendors I talk to are going to quit.

#3  The public comes to the Portland Saturday Market just for cheap entertainment and the social hang out, not to actually buy anything. The economy in Portland is destroyed. If anybody has a job or any money… they ain’t spending it!!

#4  The people who run the Market have a hard task in trying to deal with a City hall and other public agencies that don’t really care to help the Market out. The Vendors who should care about the future of the Market and Market policy, don’t care at all. Having attended the last two membership members meetings with maybe twenty of the same long time vendors in attendance, and the three or four hundred vendors that show up each week conspicuously absent… apathetic would be a good description.

#5  If participation in the market, got my name/brand out there and worked as an advertising tool, it might be worth paying the monthly membership fee, daily booth fees. But to work all week, then get up early Saturday, set up the booth stand there all day, then pack up and go home for a twelve-hour day after not selling one thing to cover the cost of gas and lunch… I must be insane!

#6  I can’t afford to do the Market any more. The half-assed good Market days I had were off set by three bad days. It doesn’t look like this is the right venue for my endeavour. The PSM organizers don’t really care about me or most of the vendors for that matter. They know that there is no shortage of broke, laid off, out of unemployment insurance fools, that will give the direct marketing thing a shot.

The decision whether I should try to continue doing the Market is made for me. It’s not working for me anyway I slice it. I’m sure that there are other things I can try or do… but what ever it is, it needs to be easier.

Onward…

Custom Wine Rack

A few weeks after the Turkey-Rama Experience, I received an E-mail from a couple that had talked to me about needing a wine rack. They joined a wine club and were accumulating bottles just a little faster than they could enjoy them. They liked the idea that I was trying to use recycled, reclaimed or salvaged materials. I explained how my design was modular in nature and could expand in height and width in increments of bottles and racks. After some consideration they sent me dimensions that would fit in a space appropriate for their need to store about fifty bottles. This is not the tallest rack I have produced, but the largest capacity and widest at nine bottles by seven racks for sixty-three bottles.

They also mentioned that it was more for storage and not for formal display. In other words, “It didn’t really have to look as nice as the rest of my stuff”. I began by looking at what kinds of material I had on hand and decided to use Pine for the racks and top, fir for the legs.  As I began to mill the parts for the racks I realized that the stretchers were so long they were warping slightly making it hard for me to machine and assemble the racks.

I have neighbors in a nice big shop that make beautiful, high quality upholstered couches and chairs. John from MAD Furniture caters to the professional interior design trade and goes through stacks of kiln dried Alder hardwood for the frames. He gives me long rips and short off cuts from his milling operations. It is perfect for my needs. So I shelved the parts and started over with Alder for the rack parts.

Once I changed the plan, I used material from some logs I salvaged and dried two years ago. I call them the Bertha Blvd. Logs… because that is where I saw them laying on a sidewalk for a three weeks, after a tree service trimmed trees away from power lines. I’m not sure what kind of trees but my guess was Western Maple. The legs were milled out of some Poplar pallet skids I found years ago and have used on many projects. These were the last pieces of that material.

Some of the Bertha Blvd. logs were pretty clear, but this one had some worm holes and small loose knots, so I decided to distress the top rather than to fill the defects. We weren’t going to apply any finish to the rack when it was just pine and fir, but the Alder racks and Poplar legs planed out so nicely that I left them smooth and only used my distressing tools to gently beat the top, then apply boiled linseed oil.

While some folks don’t like the distressed look others do. I began to experiment with distressing techniques after I worked so hard milling salvaged pine and fir lumber to glean clean clear material for furniture pieces, tediously sanding them smooth… only to have my heart broken when they were dinged, scratched or dented from the slightest knock. I found this hand-made meat tenderizer in a dumpster and I broke out my MIG welder to weld nuts, bolts and washers on a broken ratchet wrench. By gently spinning them over a surface I have instant antiques. I might be sleazy from a fine furniture standpoint… but the customer specified not too nice! I’m no woodworking legend like Sam Maloof or James Krenov, but the pieces are made with power tools to avoid the drudgery and assembled by hand using traditional joinery techniques. Here are breadboard ends with Black Walnut through tenons.

Still, it’s hard for me to not do the best job I can. My roots are in rough carpentry and framers have a saying when a guy is taking to long or doing too nice a job… “Hey, this ain’t no Piano”. No, it’s a 40″ X 40″ X 15″, sixty-three bottle wine rack.

Thanks so much to the Pitkins for supporting my efforts. I glad it went to a good home.

Turkey-Rama Experience

July 9th and 10th, I did a street fair in McMinnville, Oregon at the heart of the wine country. They called it Turkey-Rama, because there used to be many turkey farms in the area years ago and they had this get together. The name changed throughout time, but it was changed back and this was the 50th anniversary.  I have traveled through that area for years, stopped for a meal once or twice, but never really spent any time there. It is a slice of classic Americana. A small farm town that is growing in fits and starts, trying to come to grips with a changing, state, nation and world.

Friday there were so many people out cruzin’ up and down enjoying the beautiful 95 degree day. But I only talked to two people who even stopped to look. I took a lap up and down the street to see who the other vendors were and noticed that there were more wine bars, tasting rooms and  other business that had wine related gifts and gourmet cooking shops, than I have ever seen.

There was DJ set up in the intersection a few hundred feet away who played a pretty nice mix of music. Being a long time musician and music fan, I talked to him. I was going to stay in town overnight and ask if there were any bars or clubs in town that had live music. He said I should have stayed in Portland because that is where the music is happening… there are only three bars in town and only one might have live music. I said isn’t there even a sleazy biker bar with a blues band on the outskirts of town somewhere? He said no, McMinnville is full of yuppie wine sippers. All right, my demographic!

What is funny is, that I closed up the booth early when the light began to fade and wandered down the street in search of the place that might have music… and a cold beer! Lo and behold there is a hot blues band set up on a stage in an intersection two blocks down. I had just seen these guys a week before at the giant Poertland Waterfront Blues Festival over 4th of July and they just tore it up in front of fifteen thousand people. Ty Curtis Band is a young up and coming group from the Salem area that is the future of blues music. I caught the last half hour of a smoking set. I have been following these young cats for a few years and they are the real deal. Hank Shreve is a great blues harp player and the perfect partner in crime for Ty.

After getting my soul vaccination I was off in search of that cold beer. I went into the place that I will not name, because it is part of a famous oregon chain of businesses that I have much respect for. I ordered my favorite micro brewed ale and it was served in not only a warm glass but a hot one right out of the dishwasher. I only drink on occasion, and had been looking forward to this all day. What a disappointment!

Saturday was cooler and the crowd was much bigger. I talked to a lot of people and got my usual compliments. Just as I was thinking that I might not even sell anything and paid for a booth fee only to stand in the heat all day to do it… I sold a piece. A little later a couple bought my two nicest Black Walnut wine racks.

Finally I talked to a couple that loved my stuff but had specific space requirements and went home to measure. I never heard back from them but that is usually the way it goes much of the time. However, that is not the end of the story. To be continued…

The Experiment in Direct Marketing Continues

When I am a vendor at the Portland Saturday Market, wine festivals or street fairs, I hand out lots of cards and flyers to people who say they are interested in buying one of my wine racks or having a custom rack made for them. Very few of those people ever contact me. For a while there I didn’t know what to think. Maybe this is not the way to go about selling my products.

Possibly wine racks were something too large for purchase from a craft vendor, except that I have sold some of the largest wine racks I have ever produced to people who walked up, said, “Wow these are cool, I have been looking and have never seen anything like this!” Then bang, they whip out a couple hundred bucks cash and take them away.

I believed going into this,  setting up a vendors booth at markets was partly to get my products out in front of people and get some feedback about them. Secondly, I might take orders for custom work, or have folks look on-line here at other inventory that I couldn’t bring out to show.

Finally a couple that talked to me at the PSM, e-mailed me and set up an appointment to come to the shop to see what kinds of wine racks I had. They ended up buying one of the larger pieces that got great comments every time I showed it.

There was another piece of furniture in the shop that they liked too. It was the first in a series of tables that I made a few years ago as a design exercise. They bought this one also.

I called them “eighth note” tables because I wanted the legs to look like musical notation. Back in my previous life as a contractor, I worked on a new house doing finish carpentry. The flooring contractors installed pre-finished Brazilian Cherry flooring throughout that house and two others next door. They made a huge pile of off cuts and mistake cuts to haul to the dump. I ask if I could have it. They said it’s all trash and they gave me some opened boxes of material that they couldn’t return also.

I wrapped the entryway columns with specially milled Mahogany

One of the most difficult jobs I ever tackled

You can see a stairway inside the front door. It was metal framed and I fabricated, installed 2″ thick Brazilian Cherry stair treads.

You can see the flooring material, and I salvaged left over material that was used to edge around the stair wells.

I planed the finish off the flooring and laminated pieces together for the legs and stretchers, then I took short off cuts left from the thick stair treads to glue up a laminated butcher block top with the thick edging material as the border.

The shelf was carved with a router jig out of a big piece I had in my lumber stash for many years. I think I got it at an auction.

This table was pretty tall at about 38″.

The second variation was a little shorter at 30″. When all was said and done I think I had something like 90 hours into this one table. Some exercise!

And this was a coffee table, more or less square at about 26″ in height. Once I did one the others were faster… but that is not saying much.

Thank you to Kristy and Deb for supporting my efforts. I’m glad they went to a good home!

Clear vertical Grained Fir and California Redwood with a marble tile top.

Wine Racks Made From Scrap Hardwood

About the time I get a piece or project sanded and start to apply the finish, I’m already thinking about the next variation or permutation of my design ideas. The Portland Saturday Market is in one respect, a brutal evaluation of the finished work. I’m too close to the work to have any objectivity and by the time it is done, I have mentally moved beyond. I’m already thinking two or three projects down the road. I’m wondering how I can come across more interesting material so I can try new ideas.

I keep hearing people tell me that I’m an artist. I wish. I’m just a craftsman… on a good day. A long time ago, somebody told me that the art of being an artist is getting paid for it. If that is the criteria, then for sure I ain’t there yet!

Last month, I used my shop time to build a machine that would help me with a woodworking operation, producing joinery at the heart of my wine racks. I have tried many different ways to make this joint and they all had different pluses or minuses.

Most of the stuff I used here was salvaged out of dumpsters. The motor is a nice old GE capacitor start, 1/6 HP unit, that came from a forced air furnace. The black metal frame came from a debris box at the back of a contract office furniture business a couple blocks away. The only things I had to buy were the bit on the right… a plug cutter that could also be used to cut round tenons… and, a 3″ pulley and three 1/2″ ID, ball bearing races, that mate with the shank of the cutter.

I had some scraps of Delrin in my stash of junk that I call my “Magic Bucket”. It is thirty year collection of weird pieces and parts you could never buy in a hardware store or supplier. I made two pillow blocks to house the bearings and mounted them on the board.

I saved these two pieces of junk years ago hoping that some day I might be able to build a thickness sander. The thing on the left is from an old Kodak photo enlarger and on the right is a crank from a cheap Delta bench top table saw I burned out.

I had no real plan other than in the end, I knew what I wanted it to do. I was making it up as I went along. I cut down the bracket holding the saw crank and re drilled holes so it was more compact.

I mounted a small table with a fence to hold parts. The crank in front moves the fence back and forth. The big knob moves the table up and down. Now I can cut accurate round tenons for my rack parts very quickly. The rack parts may be different dimensions, but it is easy to change the set-up for different sizes.

I’m always trying to build the parts for my wine racks with big pieces of material. It is easy to take small pieces of inferior lumber and glue them up into bigger pieces. But in the purest sense of wood working, big pieces simply look like what they are. Of course, many times big pieces of solid wood are hard to come by or more expensive. For production furniture factories, lamination or veneering give the appearance of big piece of wood. It is a cheap way to say that the pieces are still made from solid wood. One way around this for me, is to use joinery to make small pieces into big ones. Then there is no need to make excuses for the lamination, as it is on purpose and part of the design, not just a device to build products cheaply and efficiently as possible.

I had some chunks of Apple wood that I got from a dried stack of fire wood. I also had some odd nice pieces of Black Walnut. Look at the bottom right corner and there are some sample blocks I ran through the router table to make a tongue and groove joint.

It’s hard to see, but I cut a groove in the “bread board” ends of Black Walnut and the ends of the “field”. Then I glued a floating tenon of a contrasting colored wood into each to join them. I left the end of the floating tenon a little long so it stands proud of the table top. I’m trying to say, “look at the joints”, not ,”I don’t have any big pieces of lumber to use”.

On another note, with my new “Pencil Sharpener” machine, I can produce rack parts of different dimensions so much faster, that I changed the size of the cleats in the rack. In talking to wine makers, I found that bottle manufacturers are selling Champagne bottles cheaply. Many producers of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are using these bottles. The glass is thicker even thought the inside volume is the same, it makes the outside dimension larger. My rack dimensions have worked for 90% of all the bottles I have come across, but these big bottles touch and it bothers me. So by making the cleats an 1/8″ of an inch wider, they fit easily without touching. It makes the racks look a little more substantial too. I like a substantial look. I’m still in the middle of my substantial look period, ha, ha, ha.

The frame and racks for this piece were made of Alder scraps gleaned from my neighbors who build really high quality upholstered furniture.  Market goers see this checker board top from thirty feet away and gravitate right toward it.

I sit at the Market all day and every minute, I hear people walking by comment on how nice my stuff looks. Like I’ve said before, If I had a nickel for every person that rubbed the finished top of this piece and said, “Beautiful work man, you are an artist”, I wouldn’t have to sell this stuff.

I dropped my prices by a third to one half, just to see what would happen. Out of every three people who say, what a unique product, or what beautiful wood, great workmanship… one person will say, “…And your prices are very reasonable or even too cheap”. Many PSM vendors have told me to double my prices and then they would sell like hot cakes.

So, I sold a couple of pieces. It covered my vendor fees. I don’t think that prices have any thing to do with selling them or not. The market segment is a small one and only wine aficionados are the buyers. Thanks to those people, enjoy them.

“Free Wood”… Money Grows on Trees!

Somebody at the Portland Saturday Market, ask me, “What kind of wood is this wine rack was made from”. Sorry, sometimes I’m a wise guy. I said, free. But of course, while money does grow on trees, it is very time consuming and dirty hard work to turn them into lumber.

I started building these smaller wine racks, eighteen inches tall, to sit on top of kitchen counters.   I didn’t think at the time, it would be easier for me to source material, because the parts would be smaller.  If I can’t lift the log into my truck by myself, I can’t really deal with it right now.

Portland General Electric the local utility, contracts with tree services to trim trees away from their power lines. About a year and a half ago, they trimmed a dozen trees on SW Bertha Blvd., across from the bus stop behind the Burlingame Fred Meyer store at the intersection of Barbur Blvd. They chipped all the small stuff and left some logs. I drove by them for a couple weeks thinking they would come to get them or else someone would snag them for fire wood. Finally I stopped and  dragged them into my utility trailer.

Here is a typical evolution of  one of my pieces:

I think these were Western Maple but I’m only guessing. It is pretty hard but it dried very fast and is not that dense as material goes. When the logs began to check, I split them with a maul and hammer, along the natural crack.

Next, I plane flat surfaces and try to square the logs up on the jointer.

I try to decide how to make the trade off between a high yield and  clear or figured material. Then I start to slice them up on the band saw.

Ah, some clear pieces with some figure! Enough for a book matched top.

I usually cut pieces a little bigger and let them dry some more for a few days. Air drying is a black art. Wood is always retaining and releasing moisture depending on the humidity and temperature. Every time you cut a new surface the material dries further and usually warps some more as the cells collapse and give up moisture. Here are parts for the racks, ” relaxing” until I run them through the thickness planer for rack parts.

I glue up the book matched top.

I laminate some Black Walnut strips to the edge banding.

I use these jigs to make the “cheek cuts” for the tenon joints on the racks… they will mate with round mortices I bore into the legs with a Forstner bit on a drill press. Here I remove material on the router table with the same jigs:

I use my second table saw with a fixture mounted so it that holds the rack parts ninety degrees from the router table, making an eight sided tenon. It’s not quite round, but fits tightly and allows glue to squeeze out making assembly quick and accurate.

I bore the round mortices in the rack stretchers.

Finished top with three coats of polyurethane.

“Bertha Boulevard Wine Table: KTW #2309”

McMinnville Wine & Food Classic

It was a lot of work but it was fun too. I met so many people and had some great conversations. I can’t say enough about the SIP Festival staff and volunteers . Very professional and competent throughout and they went out of their way to help me with my truck problems on Saturday night. The festival seemed well attended and there was a good party atmosphere. I met quite a few folks from out of state and at least as many people from the Portland area as locals.

The Evergreen Avation & Space Museum was an amazing setting. I had a chance to walk around the Space building all by myself before it was open to the public. I talked with a guide that had been an engineer. His knowledge of the history and how politics and events influenced the development of the space program was a great insight. I need to go back and spend time reading through all the exhibits and then go next door to the Aviation building and see the Spruce Goose.

Friday Morning was a little wet.

There was a spectacular array of wineries and the arts and crafts vendors and food vendors were very good too. I wish I would have had some time to walk around and maybe have a glass. I did get a sip of what my neighbors the Duke Family Vinyards, 2006 Pinot Noir was like… and I mean this as a compliment… it tasted like Kool Aid. It was so good and drinkable. One could drink a lot of this. I don’t know how to talk about wine and I would rather drink beer. Nevertheless, it was great experience. Then Dukes 2007 Pinot Noir was very different. From grapes grown twenty miles away from the ’06. Much more tannin, a little more bite and earthiness. It made me want a thick grilled steak.

Home of KTW fro 3 days, My neighbors the Dukes Family Vinyards

I got a minute to talk to my new buddy, Wende at Willamette Valley Vineyards and had a sip of 2008 Pinot. Great, great wine. I wish I had the vocabulary to express, but very rich and elegant. I only drink anything at all occasionally, so it is a real treat to taste these wines.

I was too busy to get to a friend I have known from high school. Ken Slusser of KathKen Vinyards in West Salem. I am planning on going to a couple of the concerts in the series they will be having at their vineyard this summer. Then I will have a proper chance to sample their wines. Ken said he makes a Port I would be interested in. It was great to be able to talk to him for a few minutes in passing. We were kind of working after all.

Saturday and Sunday were sunny spring days.

I had an OK weekend. I sold enough to cover the cost of the booth fee and a tank of gas. I got lots and lots of encouraging feed back about the work. I hope maybe one or two of the many people that ask or talked to me about custom work will follow through. The path of least resistance would be for me to put piece from my portfolio back into the rotation to build it for them when I can source some materials.

Thanks to all who bought wine racks from me. They went to good homes!

The view from my corner of the building...

Dukes Family pouring away...

There was pretty good live entertainment all weekend and way better that a lame Muzak track or something. Saturday evening Ellen Whyte sounded great from where I was and she played a long time I think. Love ya Ellen! Wish I could have been up close to see you, you are the real deal.

The old Datsun pressed into service for the Sunday retreat back to Portland...

Portland Seafood & Wine Festival

seafoodandwine

The experiment in direct marketing continues this weekend. If you are in town come see me at booth #1115. I think it is a corner booth.

I have heard radio spots all week and just saw a TV commercial. I think it is twelve bucks to get in and you get a hundred bucks worth of coupons for local restaurants, etc.  Hey, the first three hundred visitors get and commemorative wine glass!

There are supposed to be fifty wineries in attendance. I believe that the application process for the wine vendors closed within a couple of weeks of last years festival. The organizers had 8500 visitors last years and expect a good turn out this year too. We will see!

I have been busy in the shop. I have a number of new pieces to take to this show. I have a bunch of stuff that got cut out but is in pieces on the bench. I had some problems with tools and a machine breaking, so I got a little behind. Still, I have more stuff to show that I have space.

Oregon Black Walnut... my favorite!

I try to get a bunch of projects glued up and sanded, so when I set up to spray finishes, I am more efficient with the time it takes for the process to apply all the coats. I hope to set up today and take photographs of my current inventory as I load it up for the show.

Clary Philipp-Knot Traditional Woodworks-Portland

Welcome to D'olSkankeyWorkChop

Located in the basement of an old furniture factory in the industrial district of South East Portland, I built my shop space out from scratch in 2005. I’m about five blocks from the Willamette River near the end of the Hawthorne Bridge, just minutes from downtown.

My first shop was in an open carport with a dirt floor, a hundred watt light bulb and a Sears Craftsman table saw that I bought for $187 back in 1977. I lived in San Mateo California and started working as laborer for a remodeling contractor, digging ditches for $3.25 an hour. In a few months I became a carpenter apprentice and in the following years I worked in all kinds of construction jobs and eventually got my California contractors license. The next twenty years saw me build and work out of five big and small woodworking shops. I moved to Portland, Oregon in 2002 and started Knot Traditional Woodworks as a remodeling business specializing in finish carpentry and cabinet installation. I built the shop to facilitate my remodeling endeavors.

The economy in Oregon was still working and at 50 years old so was I. In 2004, I got hit by a 16 year old red light runner. That was a wake up call for me that my body was starting to give out on me after 25 years of construction work. It took me almost a year to recover.

One morning I was reading the Oregonian and drinking coffee. I had been thinking about ways to restart my contracting business or maybe some other way to make a living. I couldn’t see my self doing carpentry in the rain and cold into my sixties and seventies. I had a vision that maybe I should come up with an idea for a product that I could use my passion and skill in woodworking to start an new business model. An article on the front page of the paper was about the growing wine industry and how it was the third largest business in the state at 54 million dollars. A little light bulb went off in my head and I thought I should be able to carve out a little of that some way. Then It hit me. I can design and build wine racks and maybe try to use recycled and reclaimed materials.

I did a lot of research on existing wine rack companies and then started to build prototypes of my own designs. It took me a long time to solve the different problems I encountered and I’m still tweaking my tools, jigs, production process, design ideas. This last year I quit contracting and have been a craft vendor at farmer’s markets, wine festivals, wine tastings and the world famous Portland Saturday Market.

Now that I have been at this for a few years, I have started to build an inventory of hardwood logs that I cut from the urban forest. Local exotic hardwood trees are being taken out for development and fall as a result of storms. Money does grow on trees.

I hope this blog will chronicle the evolution of my woodworking business and my experiment in direct marketing. It’s a tough time to be in business or to be starting a new business. The economy here is just destroyed… thanks dubya. But hey, it’s a new year, new decade and seriously it won’t take much to be better than 2009. Here we go…

Old growth Fir window sash and jambs I fished out of a dumpster

Three case model in fir, marble top with California Redwood panels