Handcrafted

by Clint Harp

  “Wow, that sounds amazing,” I said. “Um, how much would you want for it?”

  He thought for a moment. “How about this, Clint? We’re phasing it out and I don’t want it to just sit there unoccupied. How does twenty-five dollars a month sound?”

  The first thing that ran through my head was Well, that’s the top of my budget, but if you’re sure! But what came out of my mouth was something more along the lines of “Are you serious?” He was. I couldn’t thank him enough.

  John and I agreed I’d be responsible for the rent, electricity, and water. As I thanked him for his generosity, I remember wondering if I could bring my own water from home and pee out back to keep a lid on the water bill. Yes, we were that poor. But I now had a shop and my first client—and no clue whatsoever about how everything would come together. But clearly something was happening, and I kept moving forward.

  As it goes in life, so it goes with carpentry. While you may start out with an idea and plan for how you’re going to build something, it doesn’t always end up that way. You don’t have the pieces you need. You saw a few boards too short. Your day doesn’t go as expected and the three hours you thought you’d have to spend in the shop turn out to be less than one. And yet you keep building. Keep hammering. Keep chiseling. Because if you sit around and wait for all the pieces to line up—for all the conditions to be perfect—you won’t make it very far. And you certainly won’t be able to finish six pieces of furniture by yourself in barely two months.

  * * *

  A week or so after our dinner with the Gaineses, I called Chip to let him know I had a shop. I’d discovered it was right next door to this tall, dilapidated white farmhouse turned crack house, but whatever. At least I had a place. Chip quickly volunteered to pick me up in his truck and help me get my tools out of storage. He dropped me back at the shop and left me with an “All right. Get to work, bud.”

  For the first few days, I went around town in search of pallets. Same song and dance from my Houston days, and I even got lucky again. As I drove down Valley Mills Drive, straight through the heart of town, I spotted a huge stack of pallets from the lumberyard of a building supply company. Bonus: The pallets looked like they were at least eight feet long! I went inside and asked if I could take some off their hands, and to my delight, they obliged. What I thought was eight feet turned out to be twelve feet of 1x4 boards nailed to four 3x3 posts. Bingo: I could make legs out of those.

  When I agreed to make Jo some pieces, I just left out the part about how I really didn’t know how to use the lathe I’d purchased back in Houston. Knowing her now, she probably wouldn’t have cared and still placed an order, but my own insecurities egged on my silence. Before deciding to buy a lathe, I’d royally screwed up the legs on the first table prototype I’d shown Kelly. “I love the top!” she’d exclaimed. “But tell me about the base. There’s sort of an Asian-fusion thing going on, and while that’s cool, it’s not the look I thought we were going for.” That’s when I decided I needed to buy the $319 lathe I’d seen advertised at a local discount tool store. Not only did I purchase the lathe, but I also forked over another $70 for turning chisels. I’ll always remember standing in the checkout line with my kids, who saw me as their hero, while I was thinking about how I was completely gambling away their futures. After putting together my new lathe, I went on YouTube and found a video of a wood turner making a small honey dipper—it’s what came up first when I googled “how to use a lathe.” I stood there in my garage watching that video a few times. I put some thirty-inch-long, 4x4 stock on the lathe and turned it, doing my best to mimic the guy in the video. (Incidentally, this is also the way I’d learned to pick on my guitar back in junior high—simply by repeatedly watching close-ups of James Taylor’s hands during a PBS concert.) When I was done, my sample turning looked like crap, but I was still proud. I then attempted to make four incredibly simple legs and hoped they looked similar. I replaced the original Asian-fusion base with those four legs and wasn’t too impressed with myself. I hadn’t used the lathe again since.

  Now, with my bounty of pallets sticking out from the back of the SUV, I returned to my new shop. I pulled out my trusty hammer and small pry bar. My tools were no match for those bad boys. Instead of the short but sturdy nails that had held together the pallets I’d been working with back in Houston, these boards had been hammered together with legit 16-penny nails. Lots of them. I ran to the store and bought a four-pound sledgehammer and crowbar. It was backbreaking work. Day after day, I carefully pulled those pallets apart, doing my best to salvage every foot while removing all the nails. Turn a piece of wood with a nail in it on your lathe and watch how fast your chisels get ruined. I couldn’t afford to break my tools. I even used a pair of pliers and a drill to surgically remove certain stubborn nails. It felt like a strange breed of dentistry.

  By the time Joanna showed up a few days later with the sketches she promised, it actually looked like something was happening in my shop. I had a pile of wood in the middle of the floor, like dirty laundry. My few tools were set up and the sturdy worktable I’d made from the scaffolding planks I found in the Houston construction site trash heap was sitting to the side. “Hey, can I buy this one?” Joanna asked when she spotted it. “Sorry, can’t sell it,” I said, laughing (while also crying a little on the inside as I could’ve used the cash). “Too many memories of the crazy ride Kelly and I have been on. But I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that you like it.”

  She handed me her basic sketches, which included a couple of dining room tables, a coffee table, a bench, and a rolling island.

  “What do you think of these?” she asked.

  I glanced at the sheet. “This looks good,” I told her. “You got it.”

  “Awesome!” she said. “How long do you think it’ll take you?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe a few weeks?”

  “That’s great,” she said. “As a matter of fact, at the beginning of May, I’ll be having a sale in my house of a bunch of home goods. I’d love to have everything ready to sell by then.”

  I agreed. That would give me two months. Joanna said she’d swing back by in a week to check on everything. Then as she walked out, she looked back over her shoulder and yelled out, “And, Clint, don’t forget about the turned-leg farm table, okay?”

  Crap.

  * * *

  Our money was almost gone. All the bills I’d been paying down before I quit my job were still there. Toss in the cost of that New York City trip, our relocation expenses, the new tools and materials I’d purchased, pre-K for Hudson, medical bills for Holland’s birth, and other debts, and you can see why we were at the edge. And that one credit card we had? Totally maxed out.

  What’s funny is that when I considered telling John Alexander that his price for renting the shop was at the top of our budget, it actually was. At that point, we had less than a thousand dollars left in savings and were close to running out of Kelly’s graduate school stipend. But at least one thing was going my way: I had secured a place to get cranking on Joanna’s tables. Now all I had to do was dust off my lathe and figure out how to turn a leg.

  CHAPTER 10

  * * *

  Leg Work

  Turning a leg on the lathe can be therapeutic. I, like every other turner out there, have my own unique style, from the way I hold the chisels to the way I pass them over the wood. When I turn, a few things have to be in place. One, I’ve got to have my music. Switching it on is like throwing a magical cloak over myself and disappearing from the concerns of the world. I have all the blanks prepped and ready usually stacked next to the lathe, which means I’ve cut them all to length with a centering hole poked on each end. This way, I can keep turning without having to walk away from the lathe to prepare more stock. After my first cuts, I then use skews, parting tools, bowl gouges, and other chisels to give the leg the shape I want it to have. It’s in this process of creating legs, candlesticks, bowls, and other turned objec
ts that I experience the reality that a furniture maker is really an artist. Like a potter covered in clay after a day’s work, we builders go home with splinters in our palms, sawdust under our nails, and satisfaction in our hearts that we’ve handcrafted a piece that will forever tell a story.

  In the days after Joanna stopped by the shop, we exchanged a few text messages to clarify details about how she wanted her pieces to look. Then a few more treasure hunts through the city landed me some amazing lumber for the job. All good, until I tried to turn the legs for the farm table.

  I’d been avoiding the task, mainly because I didn’t know how to tackle it. But time was running out. Joanna was expecting the pieces to be ready by early May, and it was already mid-April. I had to make a start. I plugged a blank into the lathe, then measured down about four and a half inches from the top of the leg and made a line. I left that part of the leg stock straight so I’d have enough room to attach the skirt. Below that line, I rounded out the rest of the stock. After it was nice and cylindrical, I got creative: I cut in here, rounded out there, and on and on I went down the length of the leg. Four hours later, I’d finished just one leg. And by the time I reached the bottom of the leg, I’d already forgotten how I did the turnings up at the top.

  I was a wreck. If one leg took me four hours, I kept thinking, how in the world will any of this ever be profitable? And how can I re-create a leg when I can’t even recall how I turned it? Common sense should’ve told me to take a breath and realize that I was still learning and would improve with practice. And down the line, I could make easier styles. But when you’re feeling as stressed and scared as I was, common sense isn’t all that common. I’d promised to make a table that I now felt was completely out of my reach. I sanded the leg I’d made, took it off the lathe, and crawled home.

  I showed the leg to Kelly. “It’s great!” she said. And then she spotted my drooping shoulders. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Working on that leg reminds me of just how little I know about what I’m doing,” I told her. Before she could respond, Hudson and Holland came down the stairs.

  “Hey, Daddy, what’s that?” asked Hudson, noticing the leg I held.

  “Just something I was working on at the shop.”

  “Can we have it?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I told him. “Just be careful taking it upstairs.”

  My two kids marched happily up the staircase with their newfound treasure, and I spent the rest of the night in a daze.

  The next morning, when I came downstairs before heading back to the shop, the kids were already up and running around. On our table sat the turned leg. It was now adorned with stickers. “Awesome!” read one. “Great job!” read another. “We love you, Dad!” said one near the bottom. Hudson and Holland had put every sticker they could find on that piece of wood.

  I held back the tears. It was the sweetest thing. Was I inspired to go and start turning more legs? Well, no. But I was reminded that I had my family in my corner, and that Kelly and the kids supported and loved and believed in me, and it was just what I needed. I went to the shop that day, propped that leg covered with stickers in a corner where I could see it, and got back to work.

  A week or so later, Joanna came by the shop to check on my progress. I was knee-deep in building by then, and things had finally started to come together.

  “What’s that over there, Clint?” she asked. She was pointing at my disastrous attempt at a farm table leg. “Did you make that?”

  “What? That leg?” I said. “Oh yeah, that’s just something I was practicing on. It didn’t really turn out like I wanted. But Kelly and the kids liked it. See the stickers?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “and I love it, too. In fact, that’s the one. I want you to use that for the farm table. Can you make it again?”

  “I mean, yeah, I think so,” I said. “If not, then I guess we’re both in trouble.”

  Insert awkward laugh here.

  * * *

  As I continued to chip away at Joanna’s order, Kelly pressed along in school, and our kids attended a mother’s day out program three days each week. We were happy to be in Waco, happy to live somewhere familiar. We were still broke as hell, but nonetheless glad about our choice to relocate.

  With our apartment so close to Baylor, we’d often stroll over to campus and let our kids play on the grounds we’d once walked as students. They loved it. The campus was the biggest backyard we’d ever had, complete with a real-live bear (the Baylor mascot) that we could visit and say hello to if we ever got bored. Even so, after a few months in the tight quarters of our apartment, we knew we’d eventually have to move. At two a.m. on many nights, we were awakened by the sound of thumping music courtesy of the students who lived next door. “Can you please keep the noise down a little?” I’d stumble over and ask, wearing athletic shorts, black tube socks, and a T-shirt. Just over a decade earlier, we would’ve been those very students causing a commotion. Now, Kelly and I were two thirtysomethings with kids, a fledgling business, and an intense study schedule. We needed our shut-eye.

  Sleep, however, would have to wait, because Kelly and I wanted to have another child. Years earlier, when we were engaged, we’d talked about wanting a big family. But after Kelly had the emergency C-section with Hudson, we’d been advised that three should be our limit. Three became our goal. We also wanted our kids to be relatively close in age so they could grow up together. With Hudson already five and Holland two, we decided it was about time to go for a third. Yes, even with Kelly in grad school. Even with me trying to get the business going. And even with the two kids we already had requiring just about every ounce of energy we could give. “I know it doesn’t make any sense and I have no idea how we’ll make it work,” Kelly had admitted, “but it just feels like we should try.” A month later, Kelly was pregnant.

  Neck-deep in school and work and with a new baby on the way, we had little time for making friends around town. Finding a church probably would’ve helped, but we couldn’t muster the desire to go there yet. Honestly, with all the upheaval and moving around, we hadn’t consistently gone to church since that year I’d worked part-time as a pastor in Houston. My personal spiritual journey continued to be all over the map. By the time we moved to Waco, God had become more a mystery to me than ever before—a beautiful, terrifying, creative, and wonderful mystery I didn’t want to solve. I was okay with not knowing how God worked, and not having all the answers. It was enough for me to jump out into a mysterious unknown and trust that a greater power was in control.

  * * *

  All through April, I kept building. I finally got the hang of turning legs and the tables started coming together. May rolled around and the home sale with Joanna was coming up. In the days before my deadline, I worked around the clock, trying to get it all done: building, sanding, staining, painting, distressing, finishing, gluing, turning, sweating, bleeding, and sometimes even tearing up. It was a roller coaster. The day before the sale arrived and I still had stuff left to do. It’s now or never, I kept telling myself. By noon that day, it became clear it was going to be a very long night.

  I drove home at five p.m., ate dinner with Kelly and the kids, and then went back up to the shop. Kelly wasn’t too excited about me being there so late, given the crack house, with its steady stream of customers, right next door. But I promised her I’d lock myself in. And frankly, it’s not like we had another option. Around midnight, I flipped a seven-foot farm table over to paint the underside. On the way down, it slipped out of my hands and slid right down my entire shin, shaving off a giant chunk of flesh as it went. I groaned, wrapped a shop rag around it, and kept going. I worked till six the next morning with a throbbing, bloody leg, then went home and lay down on the floor and took a nap. At seven a.m., the kids came downstairs and jumped on my stomach. It was time to deliver my items.

  I took a quick shower and wrapped up my leg, then jumped back in the car and returned to the shop. There in the center of the floor s
at the six pieces I’d completed: three tables, including the farm table with turned legs; a rolling island on large casters; a bench; and a coffee table. I couldn’t fit much in my car, so trip after trip, I lugged the items over to Joanna’s house. I set up most of the tables outside on the front lawn. “Looking good!” said Joanna from the house. Exhale. By the time I showed up with the island on the third of five trips, customers were already arriving. I finished my deliveries, went home, and collapsed.

  The next morning, Joanna called. “We sold it all, Clint!” she told me. “I even got orders for a couple more pieces. Nice work, bud!” The furniture sales brought in around $5,000, which we’d agreed to split down the middle. That $2,500 was the first money I’d made in over a year. And the farm table with the turned legs? It went quick. In fact, over the next few years, the very leg that I’d once perceived as a complete failure would become the signature design I’d use on table after table. To this day, that leg, covered in my kids’ stickers, sits in my shop, reminding me that the first leg of a race doesn’t have to define the last.

  * * *

  In the months following that first order with Joanna, she called me pretty consistently, asking for farm tables and benches and islands. At one point, she even bought space at a local store and displayed my furniture there with her home goods. Not a single piece sold. It all just sat there for months, collecting dust. That’s how things sometimes go in sales: feast or famine, neither of which is predictable.

  Good thing I began receiving calls from other clients. A church down in Austin got ahold of me through our friend Jaclyn back in Houston. One of the leaders there wanted me to build a hutch that would sit at the back of the sanctuary, as well as a wall cabinet that would house name tags. I had never built a hutch or a cabinet, but you know me: I entertain every possibility. To discuss the details, the church leaders set up a conference call that would include me and three other people.