I'm your On-Call Craftsman for Personalized Woodworking Projects

I have always loved wood and words. I have been making things in wood for as long as I remember. I was always cutting or sanding a piece of wood for something, drawn by the craft of woodworking and the many lessons it teaches. I remember one time I was making wall scones as a boy with my father and he had given me the task of buffing out the finish coat with steel wool and applying the next coat of shellac so it would be dry by the time he got home from work. Well, some friends came by with a basketball (basketball is a religion in Indiana) and I wanted to go play. I quickly buffed the work, slapped on a finish and off I went, basketball under my arm. I returned home to find my father waiting and holding the wall scones with a scowl on his face. I had neglected to use a tack cloth and remove all of the little steel wool fibers. I simply finished over them, leaving ugly black steel fibers in the corners embedded in the now dried shellac. I had to work well into the night to remove all of the finish and start over. I have never forgotten that lesson. Just recently I was rushing to finish a project and stopped and remembered to make sure all steps were completed. "There is a reason it is called the finish," my father would say.

My great uncle Walter was an old time cabinetmaker who had a cabinet shop in Rushville, Indiana. I used to love to visit his shop as a boy and see all these wonderful and sharp tools. He would pick up a hand plane and examine it, letting the light catch and dance along the edge and then with a quick flick of his thumb (he had a tattoo of an anchor on that thumb from the Merchant Marines which made him seem more magical) to check for sharp, he would drag the plane across a piece of wood. The plane made a soft whish sound and thin ribbons of wood would fly from the mouth of the plane and land like little girl's curls on the floor. I was transfixed by what appeared to me to be the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I knew this was something I had to do.

The church was an important part of my life growing up. I decided to study religion and ministry. I received a scholarship from Butler University to study fine arts and theology, so off I went. In school I discovered words. The words of Blake, Thoreau, Emerson, Jefferson, Merton and Jung and other great thinkers of our time spoke to me. I could not get enough or read enough. I was studying wisdom. The answers I thought were in the scriptures and the words of poets and musicians. Keep in mind this was the late 60's and early 70's and answers were sorely needed. While in school I held various jobs as students often do and one was selling woodworking tools. I had a customer named Herb Wright, an old man who constantly asked me to come by and visit his shop. It was on my way to school so I stopped and began a long relationship about wood and woodworking. It was a perfect mentoring program. He had decades of knowledge and all of these tools but his eyesight and hand strength was failing. I had none of the resources but I had the youthful strength and thirst for knowledge. We built my daughter's first bed together. He taught me much.

There were education bills to pay, children to rear and homes to build. I was offered a position with a large corporation and I needed the money and so a 30-year career in corporate America began. Quite unintended actually; it just happened. I reached the level of division management where I traveled extensively throughout this great land while leading and managing a fairly large business unit. All the while, there was still the call to making. Every spare minute was spent in pursuing, even if only in knowledge, the craft.

In 1977 I read a book called A Cabinetmakers Notebook by James Krenov. It was not a how-to book but rather a book about how he felt while making and the reasons for making. It was an epiphany for me. The words of wisdom I had studied and the words of woodworking now seemed to be the same. Mr. Krenov showed pictures of wooden planes he had made and shaped to fit his hands in his book. I made my first plane over 25 years ago and I have never stopped, constantly dreaming of a day when maybe, I could really pursue my first love.

A serious heart attack ended my ability to travel constantly. I am only here by the grace of God and about seven minutes. I was offered the very rare opportunity to take early retirement. Fate, frugality and decades of investing had left us in the fortunate position to seize this opportunity. I wanted to find a way to fund my woodworking pursuits. I became interested in laser technology and I was thinking that maybe by engraving cell phones and mp3 players I could help fund my further pursuits of woodworking. I used that last bonus check to purchase a laser. The representative who delivered the machine said, "Let's fire it up". I looked around my little shop and picked up a little scrap of cherry. We quickly scripted Follow your Bliss by Joseph Campbell and laser etched this onto this piece of wood. The rep commented, "That looks pretty good!" I replied, "Yes it does!" The concept for Fishers Laser Carvers was born that day.

This is the result of a lifetime of pursuit. It is in fact a dream coming into reality. It is my intention to continue my journey into the craft of woodworking and combine the wisdom of words with the sensitivity and spirit of craft and share it with you here. I desire to spend the rest of my life, however long that is, making simple things that may uplift or bring a bit of joy to others and share my joy and passion with you. I hope you find this a friendly and uplifting place to visit. I hope you find something intensely personal here to own. Mostly I hope you find items to purchase that bring you peace.

George Beck, Fishers Laser Carvers