Below is a list of Events I will be participating in...
Long Island Farmers Market (Winter Market)
Sundays 9-1 (Dec 10 & 17)
Spirit of Huntington Art Center
2 Melville Road N. Huntington Station, NY
LIFM Web Site
Sundays 9-1 (Dec 10 & 17)
Spirit of Huntington Art Center
2 Melville Road N. Huntington Station, NY
LIFM Web Site
NEWS ARTICLES
NEWSDAY January 2023
Woodworker Don Dailey carves spoons, bowls, Christmas ornaments
and gnomes in his Huntington Station garage.
Credit: Linda Rosier
Handcrafted gifts
By Rachel Weiss
Don Dailey first got interested in woodcarving as a Boy Scout. He has spent most of his adult life building cabinets, tables and desks.
But during Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Irene, he homed in on exactly what he wanted to create: Dailey started fashioning spoons out of wood from fallen trees.
“I started doing craft shows and one led to another,” said Dailey, 70. “A lot of the stuff I have now, I added because people would request something and I’d keep making it.”
Dailey carves spoons, bowls, Christmas ornaments and gnomes. He calls his business The Sunday Woodcarver, because it started as a blog where he would take one day a week to carve something and then write about his progress.
At first Dailey used a lot of walnut, cherry and maple for his work, but his current favorite is basswood because it’s “soft but still holds details,” he said. He works in his garage, at his house in Huntington Station.
“It has pluses and minuses,” he said. “It’s nice to leave one room, go into another space and be able to work. And to have something partially done, then leave it and come back to it, that’s convenient. The downside is, I tend to track a lot of sawdust into the house.”
Dailey said it’s a crowded workspace, with pathways leading from one spot to the next. Among the wood there’s a bandsaw, drill press, a large sander and other tools.
“There are little workspaces scattered around the shop for each part of the process,” he said. “It’s a garage, so when I can, I open the door and work outside.”
When Dailey first started selling his work at craft fairs, he’d write instructions on the back of the price tags of his spoons for what they should be used for, whether it was baking or making sauce. When customers started disagreeing with him, he realized his work could find multiple purposes once they leave his home: “People figure out what they want to use it for,” he said.
No matter what, he prefers to have customers come and buy his work in person. “People can touch things and pick them up and feel them; you can’t get that across Etsy or a website.”
Woodcarving isn’t Dailey’s only art form. He’s also a musician, and composes music in an office on the first floor of his house.
“Part of that space is also where I do carving and the painting of my carvings,” he said. “It’s not messy, so I can do that indoors.”
Woodworker Don Dailey carves spoons, bowls, Christmas ornaments
and gnomes in his Huntington Station garage.
Credit: Linda Rosier
Handcrafted gifts
By Rachel Weiss
Don Dailey first got interested in woodcarving as a Boy Scout. He has spent most of his adult life building cabinets, tables and desks.
But during Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Irene, he homed in on exactly what he wanted to create: Dailey started fashioning spoons out of wood from fallen trees.
“I started doing craft shows and one led to another,” said Dailey, 70. “A lot of the stuff I have now, I added because people would request something and I’d keep making it.”
Dailey carves spoons, bowls, Christmas ornaments and gnomes. He calls his business The Sunday Woodcarver, because it started as a blog where he would take one day a week to carve something and then write about his progress.
At first Dailey used a lot of walnut, cherry and maple for his work, but his current favorite is basswood because it’s “soft but still holds details,” he said. He works in his garage, at his house in Huntington Station.
“It has pluses and minuses,” he said. “It’s nice to leave one room, go into another space and be able to work. And to have something partially done, then leave it and come back to it, that’s convenient. The downside is, I tend to track a lot of sawdust into the house.”
Dailey said it’s a crowded workspace, with pathways leading from one spot to the next. Among the wood there’s a bandsaw, drill press, a large sander and other tools.
“There are little workspaces scattered around the shop for each part of the process,” he said. “It’s a garage, so when I can, I open the door and work outside.”
When Dailey first started selling his work at craft fairs, he’d write instructions on the back of the price tags of his spoons for what they should be used for, whether it was baking or making sauce. When customers started disagreeing with him, he realized his work could find multiple purposes once they leave his home: “People figure out what they want to use it for,” he said.
No matter what, he prefers to have customers come and buy his work in person. “People can touch things and pick them up and feel them; you can’t get that across Etsy or a website.”
Woodcarving isn’t Dailey’s only art form. He’s also a musician, and composes music in an office on the first floor of his house.
“Part of that space is also where I do carving and the painting of my carvings,” he said. “It’s not messy, so I can do that indoors.”
Shaping Our World
Recently I was interviewed for Family Day at Bayou Bend Museum in Houston, Texas. The conversation was about the tools we use for woodworking in the 17th Century vs now. Here is the interview.
Recently I was interviewed for Family Day at Bayou Bend Museum in Houston, Texas. The conversation was about the tools we use for woodworking in the 17th Century vs now. Here is the interview.
The Long Islander - December 6, 2012
Newsday - December 24, 2012
Sunday Woodcarver Turns Sandy Debris Into Beauty
by Brittany Wait
As Long Islanders cleared and disposed of fallen trees left in the wake of superstorm Sandy to remove any evidence of the storm, Huntington Station resident Don Dailey salvaged the pieces.
From the remnants of devastation, which he organizes in piles in his driveway, the local furniture maker has turned destruction into beauty, carving pieces into spoons, gnomes and Santas.
“It doesn’t look like anything to you, but this bowl came out of that pile of wood over there,” said Dailey, 60, of Huntington Station, showing one of his crafts. “Look at the rings on this one. It’s beautiful.”
After the storm hit on Oct. 29, his home was without power for six days, half of which he spent carving and then driving around the Huntington area picking up wood on the side of the roads.
“I like the idea of taking this material that people would normally think of as firewood and making it into functional art,” said Dailey, who works at Bob Schendorf Woodworking in Huntington. “It gets a new life out of a disaster. That’s really gratifying.”
Dailey, who has been carving since age 13, became scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 12 in Huntington a decade ago and has since been teaching the scouts how to carve wooden pendants to hold their neckerchiefs in place.
In the past year, his hobby turned into a side business. Dailey sells his items on Etsy.com and through his website, “The Sunday Woodcarver.”
His wife, Diane Dailey, said her husband is a real renaissance man; besides his woodworking he has also composed music.
“He’s always been very resourceful,” she said. “He can make something out of nothing. It didn’t surprise me that he would use the wood from fallen trees. The beauty of the end products as a result of that was great to witness.”
Dailey’s friend, Mary McCourt, became one of his most loyal customers after last Christmas, when Dailey gave her family a hand-carved wooden angel tree ornament as a gift. This came at a time when her family had been grieving over the sudden loss of their 22-year-old son Patrick, who was struck by a car on Sept. 17, 2011.
“It was a beautiful, strong and more masculine angel,” said McCourt, 56, of Huntington. “It was perfect in light of what happened to Patrick. It meant so much to us.”
McCourt appreciated the gift so much that she kept on buying the wooden spoons and ornaments that were recycled from fallen trees in Huntington to give to her 80-year-old mother, whose home in Hampton Bays was damaged by both Tropical Storm Irene and Sandy.
Suzanne Pelisson-Beasley, who has known Dailey for nearly five years, wasn’t aware of how talented her friend was until she received a black walnut coffee scoop he carved as a gift.
“All of his stuff is really amazing, but I have the maple coffee scoop of his, which I absolutely love,” said Pelisson-Beasley, 52, of Huntington. “I love the way the wood feels in your hand and I really do think the coffee tastes better in the morning.”
Pelisson-Beasley was also easily won over by the idea of recycling the wood from fallen trees.
“I love the idea of using the wood from trees that had grown on Long Island for hundreds of years to make products that we are now all enjoying,” she said. “The work that he does is really a gift when you see what he can create with his own hands.”
by Brittany Wait
As Long Islanders cleared and disposed of fallen trees left in the wake of superstorm Sandy to remove any evidence of the storm, Huntington Station resident Don Dailey salvaged the pieces.
From the remnants of devastation, which he organizes in piles in his driveway, the local furniture maker has turned destruction into beauty, carving pieces into spoons, gnomes and Santas.
“It doesn’t look like anything to you, but this bowl came out of that pile of wood over there,” said Dailey, 60, of Huntington Station, showing one of his crafts. “Look at the rings on this one. It’s beautiful.”
After the storm hit on Oct. 29, his home was without power for six days, half of which he spent carving and then driving around the Huntington area picking up wood on the side of the roads.
“I like the idea of taking this material that people would normally think of as firewood and making it into functional art,” said Dailey, who works at Bob Schendorf Woodworking in Huntington. “It gets a new life out of a disaster. That’s really gratifying.”
Dailey, who has been carving since age 13, became scoutmaster of Boy Scout Troop 12 in Huntington a decade ago and has since been teaching the scouts how to carve wooden pendants to hold their neckerchiefs in place.
In the past year, his hobby turned into a side business. Dailey sells his items on Etsy.com and through his website, “The Sunday Woodcarver.”
His wife, Diane Dailey, said her husband is a real renaissance man; besides his woodworking he has also composed music.
“He’s always been very resourceful,” she said. “He can make something out of nothing. It didn’t surprise me that he would use the wood from fallen trees. The beauty of the end products as a result of that was great to witness.”
Dailey’s friend, Mary McCourt, became one of his most loyal customers after last Christmas, when Dailey gave her family a hand-carved wooden angel tree ornament as a gift. This came at a time when her family had been grieving over the sudden loss of their 22-year-old son Patrick, who was struck by a car on Sept. 17, 2011.
“It was a beautiful, strong and more masculine angel,” said McCourt, 56, of Huntington. “It was perfect in light of what happened to Patrick. It meant so much to us.”
McCourt appreciated the gift so much that she kept on buying the wooden spoons and ornaments that were recycled from fallen trees in Huntington to give to her 80-year-old mother, whose home in Hampton Bays was damaged by both Tropical Storm Irene and Sandy.
Suzanne Pelisson-Beasley, who has known Dailey for nearly five years, wasn’t aware of how talented her friend was until she received a black walnut coffee scoop he carved as a gift.
“All of his stuff is really amazing, but I have the maple coffee scoop of his, which I absolutely love,” said Pelisson-Beasley, 52, of Huntington. “I love the way the wood feels in your hand and I really do think the coffee tastes better in the morning.”
Pelisson-Beasley was also easily won over by the idea of recycling the wood from fallen trees.
“I love the idea of using the wood from trees that had grown on Long Island for hundreds of years to make products that we are now all enjoying,” she said. “The work that he does is really a gift when you see what he can create with his own hands.”
My "Top 10 Tools" for woodworking has been listed on the Sears expert list. Visit the page here.
