What is in your garage?
Donn Hamm, SaddleBrooke Woodworkers Club
I know it might be a bad habit, but it is my bad habit. While driving around SaddleBrooke, I often look into other people’s garages. What I am looking for are the telltale signs of a woodworker: workbench, table saw, lathe, and hand tools, and I have found many. When it is convenient, I have a conversation with the woodworkers, and I am always impressed with the interest and focus of these woodworkers and the many and varied projects that these woodworkers are working on or have completed over the years.
Without any exception, there is an overwhelming desire to share their experience, the challenges, and, of course, to show the mini shops that each of these woodworkers has created in their garage or golf cart space. Most of the woodworkers tell of the larger and more complete shops that they had before moving to SaddleBrooke and wish that they had access to the bigger and better equipment they once had.
A couple of examples I have discovered in viewing “garaged” woodworkers is George (real name withheld) who has been making small wooden pipe organs. Several of his creations are completed, and other size organs are under construction, and they sound incredible. Another woodworker (Ray) has built almost every piece of furniture in his home over the years (beds, cabinets, and chairs) using walnut, oak, and cherry and a few exotic woods for inlay and detailing. Other woodworkers who have joined the SaddleBrooke Woodworkers Club have great backgrounds in woodturning, cabinet building, and refinishing.
The one thing that all my contacts have in common is that they love to share their hobby and skills. Many have already helped their neighbors out with a project or repair.
If you are a “garaged woodworker” and would like to share your skills and accomplishments, please contact the SaddleBrooke Woodworkers by email at sb.wood.workers@gmail.com.
SB Woodworkers are also providing short workshops in a variety of subjects, such as safety in the small shop, power tools, hand tools, and refinishing.
On a small sampling, there must be a couple hundred “garage shops” in SaddleBrooke One and TWO, and each shop has a range of equipment, from the less complex for home repairs and making cutting boards to the more involved cabinet building with dovetailed drawers and panel doors.
The SaddleBrooke Woodworkers Club, for all of SaddleBrooke One and SaddleBrooke TWO, meets every first Tuesday of the month in the SaddleBrooke TWO Saguaro Room at 2 p.m. All woodworkers are invited.