John Harden

A Woodworking Career Spanning Over 30 Years

As a child, his first memory of woodworking was fabricating crude boats to play with in the puddles and ditches of the neighborhood where he grew up, in the Pacific Northwest. In 7th grade, his boat building days were over, and he moved on to cutting boards and coat racks. He never looked at wood the same again.
After graduating high school with a strong vocational program, he began a career in residential construction (his previous experience did not apply).  A few years of digging ditches, packing lumber, and framing walls finally lead to interior trim carpentry.  For almost 20 years, he worked mainly on custom homes, building window treatments, walk-in closets, custom mantles, bookcases, and an occasional staircase. With the downturn in the economy in 2008, he had the opportunity to spend more time in his home shop (He got laid off).  
While his career in construction was going strong, he kept his woodworking a hobby, collecting and milling local hardwoods for his own personal use. A lot of it was firewood, but you never knew what it may become.  For a short time, he literally cut firewood and did small furniture projects.  As the economy picked up, so did the jobs.  Before he knew it, he was self-employed remodeling kitchens, bathrooms, decks, and custom pieces.
In the fall of 2015, everything came to a screeching halt with a table saw accident.  In the time spent healing with the loss of one finger and diminished use of several others, he had a lot of time to stare at his woodpile.  What to do with all this wood that is too small for furniture, but too pretty to throw away?   Before he knew it, he had knocked the dust off his grandfather’s 9-inch bench-top wood lathe, built in 1942.  It vibrated, rattled, and made a few indescribable noises--but it worked, for a little while.
The perks of joining the Siskiyou Woodworkers Guild enabled him to find a much-needed upgrade to his wood lathe, and his path as an artist was revealed. He is now on permanent display at ART on FIRST.