HOMETOWN FOCUS: Jaypetto’s Wood Shop: A former dentist turns to woodworking in his retirement by Cam Jayson (01/31/2020)

I retired from my dental practice in Virginia, MN, in April 2014. I was nearly 70 years old and had enjoyed my work and wonderful patients, but it was time to move on into retirement. As I prepared to close my dental practice, I wondered what I would do with my time. Would I have enough to keep me busy? Did I need to find additional volunteer activity? Those of you who know me understand I am not one for sitting around in a rocking chair.

Flash back now 15 years. I was visiting a dental school friend at his home on Lake Superior. Every year, four dental school pals gather to visit at one of our homes. This year, it was in Cornucopia, WI. While we were there, my friend told us he was going to take us to his favorite store. Off we went to Ashland to a store called Timeless Timber. This store was a lumberyard, but not your ordinary lumberyard. This establishment harvested lumber that had been found submerged in lakes around the United States. Much of the lumber was from old-growth trees that had been lost in shipwrecks decades ago. That is when the bug bit me!
Cam Jayson made these Celtic love spoons.

I bought one large and very wide board of bark pocket maple, thinking I would make a coffee table from it. Now, keep in mind that I had not done any woodworking since shop class in seventh grade, and I had little woodworking equipment. I began to read and research woodworking, and I had underestimated the material for my table by several maple boards, requiring a few more trips to Ashland.

Now, back to 2014. After my introduction to beautiful raw wood in Ashland and building and equipping a shop, I remembered I still had woodworking to occupy my retirement time. Therefore, I began to make furniture. I made tables, chairs, desks, bird houses—you name it. After a few years of this work, my wife Ruth said, “Whoa, where are we going to put all this furniture? We have given desks and tables to all the kids.” She suggested that I consider smaller items. That is when she started teasingly calling me Jaypetto. She expected one day to see a little wooden boy with a long nose come dancing out of my shop.

Remember my friend from Cornucopia, WI? One day he phoned me (I think it was in 2016). He asked me if I could teach him how to accomplish some woodturning. I had done some turning on a small minilathe in my shop, but I was far from able to teach turning to anyone. However, I have a brother who was an industrial arts teacher and taught woodturning. A few weeks later, we were all in my shop, and my brother was teaching my friend the rudiments of turning wood. The incident reminded me of seventh grade woodturning shop with Mr. Norm Stockey, and boy, did the process look like fun. Much to my wife’s consternation, off I went to the equipment store in Duluth to buy a bigger lathe.

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