Woodworker tackles a restoration challenge

As a chopper pilot in Vietnam, his standing mission involved flying a profane, hard-drinking Lutheran minister to services scattered throughout the Mekong Delta.

As proprietor of the Stained Glass School in Colorado, he crafted a skylight for Robert Redford and Lola Van Wagenen.

As a real estate developer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he made millions and then lost it all in the Great Recession.

He built two Lancair airplanes from kits.

He launched a business in Seattle and sold it to come work for Synergy Aircraft and John McGinnis.

An ex-wife once told Steve Williams if he could just stay focused on one pursuit for more than a few years, he’d have it made. That hasn’t happened.

Yet Williams, 70 years old and dwelling happily in the Flathead Valley for about three years now, said during a recent interview that life is good.

“I’ve had a wonderful life,” he said. “I’ve been so privileged and lucky. I’ve had more good fortune than any human being deserves.”

It seems there has been one enduring constant among Williams’ many varied interests: woodworking.

When he was 12 and growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, Williams built a small two-step wooden stair to ease his mother’s climb into and out of the four-poster bed crafted by his grandfather, Oscar Howard.

“My grandfather was a master woodworker and he had not one electric tool,” Williams said.

The grandson of Oscar Howard has a penchant for vintage woodworking machines that require electricity. The shop Williams is outfitting in a warehouse off Montana 35, east of Kalispell includes: a 1939 Walker-Turner band saw; a 1941 Walker-Turner band saw; a 1948 Delta scroll saw; and a 1951 Delta drill press.

The machines have mass, he said. That mass and other strong and stolid features of these vintage power tools yield precision. And a few of the older machines reflect the era of industrial design that yielded stationary power tools that are works of art.

“I like vintage because I’m vintage,” he said, smiling.

Williams recently acquired a massive new addition: a 1910 Greenlee “Variety Woodworker” machine that weighs roughly 3,384 pounds.

He purchased the piece from Norm Anderson, a cabinetmaker from Chester who had acquired it in 1979 through a broker selling equipment once owned by the Anaconda Company.

Williams said Anderson had realized quickly that the “Variety Woodworker” was far too big for his shop. He ended up leaving the machine in a field at his brother-in-law’s sprawling farm near Chester.

But before abandoning the Greenlee behemoth, Anderson built a custom crate to house it and liberally coated many of the machine’s surfaces with grease.

Nearly 40 years later, when Anderson and Williams pried the crate apart, they discovered that the “Variety Woodworker” was in remarkably good condition, all things considered.

A Greenlee catalog description from 1925 advises that the machine and its special cutters could handle a host of woodworking tasks, ranging from planing to mortise-and-tenon work to rabbeting, beveling and more.

The company known today as Greenlee Textron traces its roots to the birth in 1838 in Pennsylvania of twins Ralph and Robert Greenlee. The boys inherited their father’s mechanical ingenuity. And after the brothers’ move to Chicago and then Rockford, Illinois, their company manufactured a host of innovative industrial machines, including a “railroad tie machining car” that helped support the expansion of the nation’s railroads.

This week, Liz Dorland, a spokeswoman for Greenlee Textron, emailed an image of a page from a 1911 Greenlee catalog that displayed pricing for a Variety Woodworker model and attachments. The base machine sold then for $500. According to online inflation calculators, the Variety Woodworker would likely sell today for more than $13,000.

Williams and Anderson began corresponding in September after Anderson learned about an ad Williams runs routinely on Craigslist: “Vintage Woodworking Machinery wanted.” Williams decided to buy the power tool for a price he declined to disclose.

Earlier this month, Williams and a local friend with a low, sturdy trailer and a heavy-duty pickup drove the 200 miles to Chester to fetch the Greenlee machine. A large farm tractor loaded it on the trailer and Williams and friend returned to Kalispell, where a crane unloaded the piece just outside Williams’ shop.

Now, he plans to carefully dismantle the machine and begin the long process of restoring it. This will happen while he gets his latest venture, Montana Handmade, up and running in his woodworking shop off Montana 35.

Williams said Montana Handmade will focus on three products: curved ceiling canopies that incorporate lighting; handmade shutters with mortise-and-tenon construction and hand-forged hardware; high-end woodworking benches in the tradition of the benches designed by Andre Roubo.

He said he hopes production will begin in late winter or early spring.

“I’ll just have to take one hour a day to devote to the Greenlee,” Williams said.

He is confident the “Variety Woodworker” will someday look and operate just like it did when it left the Greenlee factory.

But Williams, like Anderson before him, doesn’t believe the massive machine is practical for his shop. He anticipates it will go someday either to a museum or to a large woodworking operation.

He said he finds great satisfaction in restoration work. And that he also thoroughly enjoys the tactile and aromatic pleasures of woodworking.

“I wake up at 4 o’clock, with no alarm clock, and can’t wait to get to work in the shop,” Williams said.

Montana Handmade can be reached at montanahandmade1@gmail.com.

Reporter Duncan Adams may be reached at dadams@dailyinterlake.com or 758-4407.