MARY CANROBERT
First I looked at the wide mahogany chest that John Richards of Burke County is building for my home.
Then I glanced around at Richards’ 1,600-square-foot woodworking shop, equipped with every kind of furniture-building and cabinet-making tool and machine that a master craftsman could want, and then I stared at Richards when he said he’s been in the woodworking business only three years.
It began as a hobby, a pastime whose passion quickly infected the Virginia-born-and-raised engineer. In addition to working full time at an area manufacturing company, Richards devotes about 50 hours a week to designing and building furniture, constructing and installing kitchen cabinets and teaching woodworking classes.
Richards said, “Before all this started, I owned only a cordless drill.” Then one day, he decided to build storage shelves, “open shelves with a closed back,” he said. Richards’ first workshop was his garage. His first woodworking tools were a circular saw and a router.
Then Richards wanted to build a cabinet for his tools. A year and a half later, “a friend of mine asked me to make his kitchen (cabinets) for him,” said Richards, who by that time had built several pieces of furniture for his family.
Richards was on his way, but being the engineer he is, he wanted to do everything exactly right. He studied chair-making at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking in Indiana, read every woodworking magazine published and watched woodworking shows on TV.
“I met David Marks,” host of the DIY (Do It Yourself) channel’s “Wood Works,” he said. Richards enjoyed an unexpected opportunity to talk shop with Marks a couple of years ago at the International Woodworking Machinery & Furniture Supply Fair USA in Atlanta.
Besides their love of all things wooden, Marks and Richards have another thing in common. Richards and his shop have been on TV, too.
Late last summer, Richards appeared in a sandpaper commercial for Klingspor Abrasives in Hickory. It was filmed in Richards’ shop. “My pay was sandpaper,” Richards chuckled. “It was worth it.”
Richards has taught classes in Klingspor’s woodworking shop, located within its warehouse. “It’s a woodworking store, basically,” said Richards, who added that the public can buy from the shop.
Richards loves to teach. He said he taught engineering classes at Virginia Tech while working on his master’s degree. Now, budding furniture makers gather in Richards’ shop for classes. Richards teaches a hand joinery class and a rocker-making class. “It’s a lot of fun,” said Richards, “especially when the guys start seeing where they’re going with it.”
Of all he does related to woodworking, Richards’ favorite is building furniture. The cabinet-making pays for the shop, but a kitchen cabinet is fashioned on a machine. The furniture building, in contrast, is something Richards does by hand.
And he’s become so good at it that he and some of his pieces have appeared in woodworking magazines, such as Woodcraft. Richards said his next challenge is “to make a Federal period table just for the marquetry experience.”
Richards is just one of those people who goes about nothing halfheartedly. “When I make a piece of furniture, I study and make it the way it would have been made 100 to 150 years ago,” he explained. Richards said he spent two months doing research before starting on the enormous piece of furniture he’s building for me. I call it a cross between a chest of drawers and a dresser.
Who knows? Richards may have his own TV show one day, and I’ll watch it on the TV that’s going to hang above my John Richards original.
For more information about Richards, visit www.jsrwoodworking.com and click on “Shop Tour” or “Hobbyist Site.”
