Retirees Are Coming Out for the Woodwork

A group of retirees seeking a hobby found an avocation that is also winning them kudos and occasionally putting a bit of cash in their pockets: woodcarving.

“I was looking for something to do, and woodcarving turned out to be a lot of fun,” said Sam Meyers, 81, a member of the Costa del Sol Woodcarvers Guild. “And our wives,” he confided, “are glad to get us out of the house.”

Meyers, a former drapery store owner, took second place out of hundreds of entries in the recent Pacific Southwest Wild Fowl Arts woodcarving show in San Diego.

When he and two dozen of his peers meet every week in Mission Viejo, they swap notes over coffee and cake and bring along their carving tools to work on projects that regularly take top honors at the Orange County Fair.

“You have to have a lot of patience,” said guild member Joe Sack, 76. “A good woodcarver is a perfectionist.”

A single handcrafted duck, for instance, can take as long as 600 hours to carve.

Guild members’ works depict not only animals but also mythical creatures like elves and griffins, abstract sculptures and highly detailed mobiles such as a working miniature carousel.

“Wood has a warmth that we all enjoy working with,” said Bob Sherry, 75, one of three men who founded the club about 10 years ago. “It has a grain and feel that you can’t get with metal or other materials.”

Guild members share knowledge as well as fellowship, and though they sell the occasional piece, “we usually wind up giving a lot of stuff away to friends and relatives,” Sack said. “We don’t do this for money. . . . We do it because we love woodcarving.”