Wiley's Woodworks

I grew up with tools in my hands, but most of my work was fixing something that was broken or keeping things running. Pretty mundane stuff. Now, I am inspired by the opportunity to create after a lifetime of repairing and crude construction just to get the job done.

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Taking on the challenge of learning the art of making fine furniture disrupted my life, taxed my brain, and rewired my thinking when I am staring at a woodworking project. I inspect wood for the necessary trueness of grain and color, moisture content, strength, and weight of the wood species; I measure 1/64" increments to make tight joints and square frameworks; my tools are calibrated to 1/10 of a degree for perfectly fitting miter corners; every cutting edge is sharpened to a shave-my-arm edge so microscopic wood fibers are cut cleanly, not torn; I have seven different types of glue (who knew); I might progress through six grits of sandpaper to get just the right look and feel on my wood; I obsess over mixtures of finish and stain to get a perfect color match. All of this is good; it is part of what it takes to develop an absurdly sharp eye for craftsmanship and detail.

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Woodworking gives me the opportunity to be creative - to make something that didn't exist before I imagined it. This is thrilling. I have an innate appreciation for things that function and work, that do something, and that last.

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Reclaiming old items or pieces and repurposing them into something totally different and useful keeps me going in the never-ending search for my next product, and yes, there is a thrill in the chase. Woodworking lets me put all these motivations together: Find something that is no longer useful, design something around it that makes it useful, and build it to last. If your first response is, "That's clever. I can use it." then my reward is complete.