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woodezine - Volume
III - Issue IV- April 2005
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Meet...
Ernie Rorabaugh
Carver, turner, toymaker,
furniture builder,
cabinetmaker, scroll sawyer and...
winemaker!
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Ernie Rorabaugh was born on the high plains in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where you can stand on a rock and see all the way to Heaven. So, it's a bit surprising that his first career choice was on board the restrictive confines of a United States submarine, where the view is limited to a few feet at best. |
| Ernie spent twenty years in the Navy, based all over the world in places as diverse as Spain, Germany, Pearl Harbor, Guam and Charleston. He served in submarines, on cruisers, carriers, and even aircraft. As chief yeoman, Intelligence, he says his job was "to keep all the secrets." He's such an affable, friendly, open guy, it's pretty hard to imagine him doing anything of the sort. |
| He has been a woodworker since 1953 when he started helping his Dad remodel homes and build casework. Aside from woodshop classes in junior high and high school, he has no formal training in woodworking... just half a century of experience. He learned by trial and error, building pieces for sale and learning as he went along what people really wanted. |
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| Nowadays he builds cabinets, knick-knacks, carvings, sculptural works, furniture and toys in his spacious workshop behind the house. One of his favorite tasks is 3D scrolling. "It caught my eye because it looked harder than regular scroll sawing," he says. "I like a challenge." Ernie demonstrates his technique at various woodworking shows, including an annual stint at the local Woodworker's Supply store in Casper, Wyoming. Here, he makes fish and flowers and a myriad other small items, some of which are three dimensional jigsaw puzzles (shown above). |
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Even his carving is self-taught, and he uses his skills to bring back Navy memories when he carves pieces like the dolphins shown at left, or the business card holders shown below. After the Navy, Ernie went to work for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and a promotion landed him in Canyon City, Colorado. He was in support services - electrical, automotive, supplies, logistics and the like. That ability to master several diverse skills shows up in his woodworking, too. |
| "I do a little bit of everything," he laughs. "I see a challenge and want to know if I can handle it. That's why I started to mill my own lumber. It comes from all over. I go to Washington state to pick up maple and alder, and get cedar in Arkansas and Nebraska. I haul the logs back here and mill them into boards in my shop, and then air dry them. Wyoming is a good place to do that - there's very little humidity." |
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There's no problem disposing of the waste from his saw mill (it's a Hudson 36 Oscar, a 24 foot long rig with a band saw on a sliding mount). He burns cut-offs and bark in his woodstove throughout the Wyoming winters. Speaking of bark, that's Hoot, his shop helper, below.
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| It's hard to imagine this tough Navy vet making whimsical pieces like the dairy scene at right, or a string of reindeer running across a window (below). We suspect his wife Susan's influence here. But Ernie is full of surprises. His heart is as big as Wyoming. Hoot was just a puppy when Ernie rescued him from a busy highway. And when he visits a friend for dinner, Ernie's arms are full of some very special wine bottles... |
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Ernie is an accomplished winemaker. His labels feature
forty different flavors - everything from Zinfandels to choke cherry.
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One of his most successful projects at shows and other venues is a series of piggybanks (shown at right) which he bandsaws and then shapes with an orbital sander. He also likes to turn lamps on his lathe, and make the wheels for his model trains, trucks and cars (shown below). Sometimes he designs the whole project, and other times he starts with a published plan and makes it his own as he works. |
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His favorite scroll saw is a DeWALT, and most of his other equipment is pretty heavy duty, like the band saw shown at right. He has power carving equipment, but likes hand carving best. And Ernie loves to recycle. The cabinets in his kitchen are built from salvaged oak pallets, which were definitely a challenge. That's his catchword: he likes nothing better than to test his skills. "If it can be made out of wood," Ernie Rorabaugh says, "I'll give it a shot." |
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All text and images on this page are copyrighted and used with the artist's permission. |
