Probably for a year, I just kind of drifted around, you know, my whole life, I've pretty much planned on coaching.

I really didn't have any contingency plans.

I didn't know what else I was going to do.

And just out of sheer desperation, I guess I decide, well, I'll try to I'll try to do something with wood.

Oh, it's a treasure hunt.

You know it.

Just before I did this, how many trees did I drive by that had that special piece of wood.

And I never noticed.

Oh.

I've gone as as far away as you want to imagine.

Go get a piece of wood.

My father in law and his family of all kind of gotten involved with with what I do, too.

And they're they're excited about it.

And they started scouting wood for me whenever they're out checking cattle or out in the pasture or something.

Oh.

You know, like an oak tree.

It has pretty straight grain.

Not a lot of characteristics in them but any time you get one of these burls like this.

The some genetic deal or injury to the tree or something that creates this real wild grain pattern.

And the burls are real rare.

I mean, you just don't find very many of them.

Now it's pretty rare, pretty special.

It's going to be pretty stuff.

I used to be a high school football coach and teacher.

I dearly loved those kids and I loved interacting with them.

And I also liked that, you know, the strategy of of a football game, you know, drawing up a play a week in practice and then seeing it play out during the game and seeing it work that that's fascinating.

If I could have just stayed out on the football field and it I'd been great.

But there's a lot of there's a lot of downsides to education right now.

The last year I coached, I just I carried a little black notebook around with me, and I tallied up the hours that I spent specifically on the coaching and the teaching part of it.

You know, being on a bus, being at the practice field, watching game film in the weight room and, in the classroom.

And I made $0.68 an hour.

And then basically, you know, it was time for something else.

So I knew that I wanted to do something creative, that I had my own hands, and I wanted to work for myself I went full bore, bought all the wood magazines and everything else, you know, trying to get all the little hints and clues and, and things to help me with woodworking and, sourcing pictures and salad bowls.

Use some basic wood turn, you know, rudimentary bowls and a magazine one time.

And, I made the mistake of trying it one day, and I've never built another stack of furniture and never done anything else with wood since I've.

It's strictly this full time.

The bowls were a starting point, but after a certain period of time, it didn't it didn't seem like as much of a challenge, you know, and having the coaching background, the competitive background, I tended to want to push it a little bit further and a little bit further.

And I'm to the point now where I do what what I call a lot of people call hollow wooden sculpture.

God leads me, apparently, to the wood that he wants me to find.

I really feel that way.

He's provided me some of the most beautiful wood that you can imagine.

And I've.

I've gone out and picked it up myself.

He created the wood, and, you know, he wants it to be used, apparently, and shown off.

So I've really never had a problem finding beautiful pieces of wood.

Wood has a lot of characteristics on its own, and I incorporate that into the work.

I do a lot of the cracks in the natural voids and the holes in the wood.

Sometimes I'll leave them open, sometimes I'll fill them with, you know, turquoise or malachite or lapis or something gives, gives a color to the wood that's not naturally there, but it's two natural, materials, and they look really nice together.

I know other people that do this sort of work, and and they're intimidated to do it through a very small opening.

There are other people that do it, but a lot of people will stop at a, you know, fairly large opening just because it is very scary to take a tool and on a piece of wood spinning that fast, knowing that just a tiny little mistake can catch that tool in there.

And then you're in a pinball game, you know, you got a 8 pound piece of wood bounce around in here.

You can't, you can't do it.

You know, I never even hope for anything like this.

I didn't it's not like you grow up and say, gee, I want to be a woodturner when I grow up.

So I didn't have any expectations of it.

And so it's been such a great privilege to be able to do it and to make money at it.

And and to be my own boss and to have it come out of the blue like it has in my life.

It's just it's made my life a whole lot more enjoyable.