Woodmaster woodworkers find personal rewards helping others
David Deckle (right) has turned his barn into a woodworking shop. He and his friend, Dave Riley (left), build tables together and “pretty much give them away.” Another friend, Robert, (center) pitches in, too.
David Deckle has high praise for his Woodmaster 725. “It’s amazing the hard work it’ll handle. It just goes and goes, never stops.”
“I love making stuff and I’ll keep making more tables and giving them away. My friend, Dave (left), and I are doing all this for the pleasure of doing it. There’s a personal reward in making things and real virtue in helping others.
I had never done any Woodworking before
I was in the seafood restaurant business for 40 years and decided it was time to sell. That was just before Covid. I wanted to do something so I chose woodworking even though I’d never done it before. I have a great friend, Dave Riley, who’s a master woodworker. He helped me get started in woodworking and now we work together. Dave’s a disabled veteran but nothing stops him.
I got a sawmill and a Woodmaster 725 planer
In 2020, Hurricane Sally went through Alabama and it took down about 20 oaks on my property. Dave told me to get a portable sawmill and we’d do something with all that wood. So I did. I chainsawed the oak trees into log lengths and we started sawing. Once everything was sawn and stacked in my barn, Dave told me to get a planer. He was familiar with Woodmaster so I got a Woodmaster 725.
Dave showed me how to get going in woodworking and we started making tables together. One of the first ones we made was for a neighbor of mine. 11’ long plus benches. That was a big project. We’ve made many smaller tables since then. We make the whole table, slab tops, legs, and all. Also smaller projects like charcuterie boards and cutting boards.
Planing red oak slabs 2″ thick x 2’ wide
We saw-out a lot of 2-inch thick red oak slabs and put them through my Woodmaster. We max it out, right up to its 25” width. The planer goes right through them. It’s amazing the hard stuff this machine will handle. It’s bulletproof – it just goes and goes, it never stops.
Here’s David’s barn full of tables. Very handsome work in a variety of hardwoods.
We pretty much give away what we build
What Dave and I are doing isn’t really a business at all. We pretty much give everything away. You could call it a hobby but it’s really two friends doing woodworking together and making some very pretty tables. At this point, I have a barn full of tables. I’ve given some away but I haven’t put energy into selling them. I don’t really know how to engage with social media though a friend put some of my tables on Facebook Marketplace. I made some finished lumber for a guy, 40, 10-foot boards. He saw our tables and bought two of them. Another guy wanted a bunch of boards to make a wagon for his grandkids. I planed 50 boards for him.
Woodmaster’s ‘Old School’ customer service
My Woodmaster works great and the folks at Woodmaster are super nice when I call for help with problems or how to do something. They’ve walked me through everything. When I call, I talk with real guys, not recordings. And they know their products. Their customer service is ‘old school’ – person to person – and it’s very refreshing.
The joy of turning raw wood into finished furniture
I love to see projects coming together quickly. And it’s rewarding to take a big tree trunk, saw it into boards, plane them, joint them, turn them into a table. It’s really the joy of turning nothing into something — trees into tables.
Woodworking is not as difficult as I thought
Learning and doing all this woodworking hasn’t been as difficult as I thought it would be. It’s almost like the Nike slogan, ‘Just Do It.’ I didn’t know anything about woodworking and I started at 65. Now I’ve got a barn full of beautiful tables. It doesn’t matter how old you are. Just take the step and you won’t regret it. One way or another, you’ll learn how!”
— David Deckle, Woodmaster 725 Owner, Wilmer AL
David Deckle’s friend, Dave Riley, is a disabled American Veteran and “tough as nails,” See Dave’s remarkable story.
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