In Larry Walden’s estimation he’s neither an artist nor a master woodworker.
Perhaps he’d accept master tinkerer, which in Walden’s vocabulary is “a hacker.”
Walden’s latest creation is perched high above the lobby of the Allen County Regional Hospital.
He calls the intricate sculpture the “twister.”
It’s the latest in a series of woodworking projects to emerge from Walden’s garage.
“This is usually where anybody can find me,” he said. “I’ll be out here until 11 most nights.”
The twister evolved from a small woodwind spinner Walden bought, simply because it was made of teak.
“I don’t think many people knew the value,” he said. “With teak, you can leave it outside forever.”
He decided to build one for his grandkids, nieces and nephews to enjoy.
Then another.
Problem was, building something that small was difficult, Walden said. He figured it’d be easier to make a larger model.
He then began tinkering with the individual wooden pieces, extending some farther than others.
Even after Walden decided to find a suitable home for his biggest one — he offered it to the hospital, free of charge — he kept changing the design.
“It probably took five months of tinkering,” he said.
He made another large-scale twister to give to a friend who works at a hospital in New Mexico, where Walden went to college.
But the decoration’s size made it impractical to ship to New Mexico in one piece.
So he assembled it, took plenty of photographs and wrote down detailed instructions so it can be reassembled at its destination.
“We’ll see how it turns out,” he said. “I like ’em for the effect.”
WOODWORKING is more than a hobby, Walden admits.
For one, it keeps him out of wife Beverly’s hair during the day.
“She finally let me keep my stuff in the garage all day,” he said. “Since she’s retired, she doesn’t need to leave for work in the morning, so she doesn’t need to park her car inside.”
In addition to building new contraptions, Walden frequently fixes or restores knickknacks or other things mechanical. A friend brought in a meat tenderizer recently that warranted attention, for example.
Being around tools and machines is old hat to Walden, who credits his mother for getting his start in the woodshop.
He was about 7 or 8 when his mother handed him a broom with a broken handle.
Fix it, she ordered.
“But I don’t know how,” young Walden responded.
Her response was simple, but direct. “Figure it out.”
So he did.
“That’s the way it was at home,” Walden recalled. “If it broke, Mom fixed it.”
Walden honed his craft at Iola Junior High and Iola High School, under the tutelage of Pete Stith and Bud Sellman.
After high school, Walden served in the Air Force, then lived in New Mexico about 10 years.
Walden recounts with pride living in a rental house in New Mexico, where he and his landlord agreed he would do repairs and upgrades to his home in exchange for cheaper rent.
“When we moved out, the landlord moved in,” he said with a laugh.
As their children grew older, the Waldens agreed life in Iola was preferable, so they returned to southeast Kansas.
There, Walden worked part time at an appliance store and for a local plumber, while holding jobs at Sifers Chemicals and in the carpentry shop at IMP Boats, as well as briefly at Wood Mark in Chanute.
Eventually, Walden settled on a career with E-Kan Fire Equipment, where he helped provide fire extinguishers or install other fire suppression systems in buildings large and small.
Walden helped install alarm and sprinkler systems in the KOAM TV 7 studios in Pittsburg and at Monarch Cement in Humboldt. The Monarch system was “certainly the largest one we’d ever done,” he said.
WALDEN, 68, retired about six years ago, “and I needed something to do. I couldn’t go down to the coffee shop and drink coffee every morning and night.”
So he retreated to the garage.
“I’m pretty good at fixing anything mechanical,” he said. “Electronics is another story.”
Walden rebuilt an old wooden wagon for a friend, built from scratch a wooden carriage for Cooper Studios Dance Center’s 2014 production of “Cinderella” and has made countless lamps, tables and other furnishings.
“I’d love to learn how to do stonework, work with marble,” he said. “I refinished a chair once in my life, and that’s all I’m gonna do it.”
He gets frequent visitors, some just to visit, others with something in need of repair.
“If it’s something that matters to you, but you don’t know if you can fix it, I’ll tell you if I can or I can’t,” he said.
There was a time he built microwave stands. But unlike others, Walden built his so the microwave sat at eye level.
“I never understood why you’d build a stand for a microwave, then have to bend over to use it.”
Walden also has designed several of his workstations. A drill press’ cumbersome handles prompted him to craft a customized steering wheel so he could manipulate the machine from different angles.
Taller wooden pieces wouldn’t fit in regular clamps, so he built his own.
So is Walden a woodworker with an eye for art? Or is he an artist who knows how to operate a jigsaw?
“Neither,” he scoffed, though others beg to differ.
