A different breed of Woodpeckers Hobby: Thirty men brought together by the love of working with their hands create furniture, birds and other objects from wood.

Find the secret compartment, said Wilfred "Bill" Dale, issuing a challenge.

There's no extra space behind the jewelry cabinet's 12 small drawers and the one large drawer. Tug on the top molding; immovable. OK, where is it?

Like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat, the 79-year-old head of an amateur craftsmen's group called the Woodpeckers flicked up the top of his mahogany cabinet to reveal the previously invisible hiding place.

Such intricate examples of the woodworkers' art will be on display June 11, when the Woodpeckers, a Baltimore-area group, meets for its annual show and competition at the Williamsburg Inn in White Marsh.

Founded in the 1960s, the group is made up mostly of retired businessmen and other professionals who share a love of working with their hands. "I spent most of my life pushing papers, so I had to do something when I got home," said Dale, who is Chief Woodpecker.

Some members, such as Dale, a Harford County resident, have elaborately equipped workshops, where they can make major pieces of furniture from scratch. Others, who have no shop or who have smaller quarters, build pieces from kits.

Either way, "we all like to be able to see something we made with our hands," Dale said. "A lot of our members are doctors and surgeons, who are very skillful with their hands."

Woodpeckers' work has been displayed in the windows of the Enoch Pratt Free Library on Cathedral Street, and a ship model made by the group is in the Maryland Historical Society. Members also made some of the furniture that is in the City Life Museum's 1840 House downtown, Dale said.

High in the pecking order is Pat Fetchero, 74, a retired dentistry professor and prosthetic dentistry specialist who approached the hobby from a different direction.

Combining his interest in bird-watching with his tactile skills, Fetchero started carving bird models in 1972. His figures are lifelike and accurate down to the texture of the feathers.

Fetchero loves bluebirds, and his carvings of these birds look as though they could fly.

His life-size Canada goose, which he said took two years to carve, looks as if it were floating on an Eastern Shore pond.

Fetchero, also from Harford County, said he doesn't carve as many birds these days. He has turned his attention to crafting "ornithologically correct" bird jewelry in pewter and sterling silver through the lost-wax process.

He also makes rubber molds from his carved birds to cast replicas in bronze resin.

"It's the finished product I enjoy," said Fetchero, who said his favorite tool for his highly detailed work is his old dentist's drill.

Dale, who retired as a computer systems analyst at Edgewood Arsenal, began his love affair with wood as a boy in Somerville, Mass., watching and learning in the shop of a cabinetmaker uncle.

"I just had an affinity for it," said Dale, who has made much of the furniture in his home.

He earned pocket money by repairing furniture for neighbors and then trained as a patternmaker for a company that produced textile machines. He designed and made wooden copies of machinery parts to be cast in iron and steel in sand molds.

Later in his career, which included time with Glenn L. Martin Co., Dale said he went into management and then into computers, but continued woodworking.

He won a Golden Hammer award from Mechanix Illustrated magazine in 1973 for a thread-spool cabinet, which hangs above his wife's sewing machine, for which he built the case. The magazine also paid him for the right to publish his plans for the cabinet.

Dale, who calls himself a "toolaholic," has a fully equipped basement woodworking shop that boasts nearly every imaginable type of hand and power tool -- including some razor-sharp bone chisels from his surgeon friends -- and common and exotic woods.

With the jewelry cabinet finished for the club show, Dale is making a small bowfront mahogany table whose drawer fronts will be veneered in bird's-eye maple.

He has seen members come and go, but says the tradition of helping one another has continued. Though all 30 members are men, women are welcome, Dale said.

Members have toured plants that produce tools, patterns, veneers, furniture and even musical instruments. Dale said one of the most interesting trips was to a company that uses lasers to cut intricate designs in wood, making quicker and cleaner cuts than saws.

"It gives us a broad knowledge of things," said the Chief Woodpecker.

To become a member of the Woodpeckers, a person must be working actively in wood, either from scratch or kits, and have completed projects to show, said Dale. He can be reached at 410-838-7259 for information about membership.

Pub Date: 5/29/97