Stoker's Corner

[Stoker]

Just a place to keep my projects for display, critique,and reference.

I was reading a thread about a new kit build featuring a woodshop and got a bit nostalgic about my wood manufacturing days and it put me in the mood to do a little show and tell , so I dug around some and found a quarter century old relic:



Jim Mountain was the nom de scène I used when I had my woodshop at Heritage Square, where I was the resident "Old Timey Craftsman". For those not familiar with Golden (Denver) , Heritage Square is an old timey town / amusement park complete with a 19" gauge railroad and mountain slides and bungee jumping and all of that sort of thing. Back then the nice old fellow who ran the railroad had a couple of nice little steamers, but the last time I was there maybe 10 years ago it was all gas engine "diesels". I mainly mass produced and wholesaled wood items, but on the weekends there would usually be a good crowd and I would don my leather apron and set up outside and hand plane some things and whatnot to draw people over my way. Mainly seemed to attract woodworker guys, where the target customer for my stuff was really women, and I would end up BSing with guys all the time and they would generally just want to pick my brain about how to do this or that and in the end they wouldn't buy anything. I decided to start stocking lumber and I changed that around and a lot of weekends I would make more from selling some Cocobolo and Bubinga and milling some custom wood profiles and such for woodworker guys than I would selling actual items. The women with the "Country Store" spiel were the pros at that, I mostly concentrated on mass producing things rather than retailing them. Eventually I started doing more and more construction oriented things and at some point the management decided to pretty much double rents and impose fines for not being open everyday and such ( at that point I was only open weekends) so I let that go and sold off most of my industrial type of woodworking equipment (Shapers, stroke sander, profile drum sander (that's what you need to really do precision scale lumber) , industrial table saw, etc) and went all construction. Most of the pictures of that shop are lost, but I do have a few.

Opening day. I had to improvise some signs. I was actually still working full time at a custom woodworking shop on the other side of the city in Aurora. Note stylish haircut.



A couple surviving shots showing some of the shop setup. This was a custom entertainment center. This was so long ago that it was back when the sun actually shined green.



Here is the T slot milling center I built. The inscription I put on the back of this picture is priceless, it says" Worlds finest workbench w/sliding router dealywopper".



Love That Country!

These next shots show a lot of my shelf product line. Everything you see I had production jigs to mill each part. Most were attached to the bench and you would press the hinged pattern's pins into the wood and pattern rout the piece with a 1/2" plunge router with a tubular guide. Flip the pattern up, remove milled piece, slide motherboard into jig, repeat. I also had a Pin Router and pattern milled some things on that. I don't know if I have a single shot of any of that type of thing. The "Mini Towel Bar Shelf" at the upper left in this shot (from a Mall show, probably Westminster) was my biggest seller. When I was going hard at this I was making a hundred or so of those a week, plus all other things in batches, My other biggest earner was a slatted back storage bench , which had a milled tenon knock down system and could easily be put together by your average female shopkeeper, so these could be stored in a knocked down state. The final straw for me doing this was when I went to one of my biggest customer's shop one day and saw a display with Chinese knockoffs of TWO of my shelves. They were slightly smaller and made of thinner crappy wood, but they were definitely patterned directly from mine.



These two pics are taken out on the deck that was in front of my shop where events were held, including the local Square Dancing club- weather permitting. Otherwise they danced in the Lazy H Steakhouse right next to me. The slatted back storage bench on the left is the knockdown one I was referring to earlier. These "Mini Heart Table"s were a big seller as well.



A custom lingerie/jewelry chest. I think I charged ~ $1,000 for this which seemed like a lot at the time, but in the end these custom pieces never seemed to pay any where near what cranking out $10 shelves by the dozen did. Fun though, and they look good in the portfolio of course.



Walking in a Winter Wonderland

That place sure was pretty when it snowed. That shot really looks inviting while I am in The Furnace this summer. You get some massive snow dumps right there in the first foothills past the Hogbacks.



Well, guess I better go out in the sweltering heat and check up on my chickens and make sure their water is up and such. Think cool thoughts and keep on Railroading everyone!

P.S: I really do have some scratchbuilds in the works that I will be sharing in this thread, I just kicked it off with a little background about where I am coming from skillset wise.