DODDRIDGE COUNTY\u00c2\u00a0–\u00c2\u00a0If you go to Doddridge County and ask the question, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What do they make here?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d you might find a man who crafts his own patented trowels and another man who builds hundreds of rocking chairs each year.<\/p>\n
SCRAPING OUT A MARKET<\/p>\n
Pat Daniels invented the Transpotter during the 1970s, when a garden trowel he was using broke.
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\n His invention is like a normal trowel, but the wooden handle is attached horizontally to the blade. He says that makes it like an extension of the human hand.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so unusual that people just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand the tool,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Daniels. He says that once people try his Transpotter, they are often pleasantly surprised. He said a friend of his who used to get fatigued after planting between 40 and 50 plants in a day can now plant 100 each day with less fatigue.<\/p>\n
Even so, getting people to dig in to the Transpotter hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been easy, a fact that he thinks stems from its unique appearance.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I still haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t made any money back yet with this thing, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m working at it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Daniels. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Maybe someday.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Daniels patented the Transpotter during the 1990\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s. He says people who had acquired the tool had urged him to patent it for two decades, and he finally decided he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d try. He says he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s made about 450 Transpotters, and sold about 300.<\/p>\n
A Doddridge County original, the Transpotter is made of West Virginia products \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the blade is West Virginia steel, and the handle is made from Mountain State ash trees.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Invented here, made here\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 used here so far,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Daniels. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hopefully worldwide before long.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
He says the trowel is available at a Southern States in Clarksburg, Town and Country Hardware in Salem, and Appalachian Glass in Weston. Daniels says he attended the National Lawn and Garden Show in Chicago to promote the Transpotter, and decided to lower his product\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s price after the trip.<\/p>\n
Pat Daniels makes the Transpotter at the farm where he also raises goats and chickens, and grows vegetables like tomatoes, eggplant, parsnips and spinach. He says his farm is largely self-sufficient.<\/p>\n
His two-room Transpotter factory runs on a generator outside the house, and when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s set up for production, Daniels says he can put out 100 trowels in a week.<\/p>\n
Daniels says he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lived in West Virginia for between 30 and 40 years, and when he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not making Transpotters, he makes his living doing carpentry work in the area.<\/p>\n
A ROCKING BUSINESS<\/p>\n
While Daniels works to find a niche for his Transpotter, Tom Doak already runs a thriving business out of a shed near his Doddridge County home.<\/p>\n
Doak is the Chairman (pun intended) of ATTA-Way Rockers, building rocking chairs for sale at West Virginia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s state parks, on the internet, and as far away as Nashville, Indiana. He says he has a large market there after a distributor found the chairs in the Tamarack collection.<\/p>\n
A retired teacher of 31 years at Doddridge County High School, Doak now works part-time in the morning at Notre Dame High School in Clarksburg, and then spends four or five hours in the afternoon working in his shop.<\/p>\n
He says the shop is set up specifically to make chairs, allowing him to finish one in five or six hours.<\/p>\n
Doak estimates that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s built at least 3,600 chairs, and says he usually builds more than 200 in a year. Last year he built 219, and in his most productive year, he says he built 268.<\/p>\n
The business started in 1986, after Doak\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great aunt asked his father to fix her rocking chair. The chair had been built by another area family, and Doak\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s father copied the pattern and made a few of his own.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153When he was not able to work any more, he still had orders for seven or eight,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Doak. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I started making just those to finish up his orders, and when they got out, we got more orders.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
While many of Doak\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chairs are sold outside of the local area, his business has roots in West Virginia. The oak, maple, cherry, and other hardwoods used in his chairs come from West Virginia. He says another retired person often helps build the rockers, and his niece puts the finish on them.<\/p>\n
The name ATTA-Way comes from the first initials of Doak\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s family.<\/p>\n
Although business is booming now, Doak says he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t anticipate this kind of success when he first starting working on chairs.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This was a good way to come home and go out in the shop, and relax, and take it easy,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Doak. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Of course, now it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s become more of a business and more involved.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
As Doak made more chairs, he said they became harder to keep in stock. He says that he cannot go to too many trade shows, because he often doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have enough unsold chairs.<\/p>\n
Doak says ATTA-Way rockers is 85 or 90 percent wholesale, but periodically sells to individuals.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2014 West Virginia Media. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DODDRIDGE COUNTY\u00c2\u00a0–\u00c2\u00a0If you go to Doddridge County and ask the question, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What do they make here?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d you might find a man who crafts his own patented trowels and another man who builds hundreds of rocking chairs each year. SCRAPING OUT A MARKET Pat Daniels invented the Transpotter during the 1970s, when a garden trowel he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-furniture-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}