Woodworking

BEFORE GRADUATING last month from North Carroll High School, seniors Ryan Nalepa and Will Lattea made electric guitars as their final woodworking projects. Ryan and Will play rock guitar, and played in a group assembled for the school talent show this spring. Then, 10 weeks before getting their diplomas, an idea was born. "We wanted to make guitars," Ryan said. They would make the wooden body, neck and head. The electronic pickup and strings would be professionally installed at Coffey Music in Westminster.

WITH A BOX OF tree branches and a fanciful chair named Emily behind her, Elizabeth Shaw helped children try her tenon cutter last week at the Howard County Fair. Shaw, who represented Howard County Woodworkers Guild, was demonstrating how she makes her rustic furniture.The Hickory Ridge resident is a newcomer to woodworking. Her work with wood started with a dream.After studying art in college, Shaw worked in a hobby store at The Mall in Columbia.One night she dreamed about a wooden folding screen, decorated with copper panels and handmade paper.

NORTH COLUMBIA, Calif. -- Rick Toles is a musician. Tim Kretzmann is a cabinetmaker. The two callings may not seem to have much in common, but Toles and Kretzmann think they do.That is why the sounds that emanate from Mr. Kretzmann's shop are often much more pleasant than the screech of the table saw or the roar of a sander.It is also why the products that come from the shop include not only shelves and cupboards but also an incredible musical instrument called the "bouffant bass" and several models of a sweet-sounding giant, stringed cigar box called the hammered dulcimer.

Millard R. Hart Sr., a retired master woodworker and lifelong tugboat enthusiast, died May 11 of congestive heart failure at the Maples, a Towson assisted-living facility. The longtime Hamilton resident was 85. Millard Raymond Hart born at his family's Belt Street home in Locust Point. His father, James F. Hart, was captain of the tug A.G. Laun, and his mother was a homemaker. Mr. Hart demonstrated an aptitude for woodworking and he studied at the old Thomas A. Edison Vocational High School at Howard and Centre streets "I didn't have to draw anything," he told Jim Burger, a Baltimore photographer and writer in a recent interview.

If the life of furniture maker Robert Ortiz was ever made into a movie, it would be full of adventure and plenty of plot twists. The opening scene would unfold in New York City in the 1960s, with a Hispanic kid from humble roots leaving home at age 14 to enter a religious order that trains monks. The camera would pan to a young man strumming a guitar at coffeehouses, renovating houses, teaching schoolchildren and eventually landing in Baltimore. After leaving the order and trying his hand at many careers, Ortiz finally found his professional calling: designing and crafting fine wood furniture.

Edward G. Jones Jr., 80, veteran, board chairman Edward G. Jones Jr., founder of an architectural woodworking firm and a World War II combat veteran who landed in Normandy with the 29th Infantry Division on D-Day, died Wednesday of undetermined causes at his Parkton residence. He was 80. At the time of his death, Mr. Jones was chairman of the board of Sieling and Jones Inc., a hardwoods and veneer company in New Freedom, Pa., that he founded in 1949. Mr. Jones began his military career in 1938 when he enlisted in the Virginia National Guard.

The Woodworking Show, a series of demonstrations and seminars for woodworking enthusiasts of all levels of expertise, will be held at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium Friday through Sunday. The show will feature a range of woodworking tools, from traditional hand-held tools to multipurpose professional systems. Show visitors will be able to handle, test, evaluate and compare all the tools, supplies and products on display. Products will be available for sale. Adult admission is $9, and children 12 and under are admitted free.

Howard K. Thompson, the founder of an architectural woodworking business who became a savings and loan association official, died Thursday of complications from pneumonia at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The former Original Northwood resident, who resided at the Edenwald Retirement Community in Towson for 18 years, was 92. Born Trenton, N.J., he was a descendant of the Alden family of New England. He earned an industrial arts degree from the old College of Trenton. He joined Trenton's Winner Manufacturing Co. and helped make light-wood, rubber-covered rafts for the Navy during World War II. He later became involved with the early production of modular homes.

Thomas Y. Ingram, a Maryland state trooper known for the 1991 capture of a Canadian fugitive wanted for shooting a Toronto police officer and shooting at two Maryland troopers, died Dec. 30 of cancer at Heritage Harbor Health and Rehabilitation Center. He was 69. A trooper for 30 years until his retirement in 1992, he received several commendations and served for a decade on the security force that protected Govs. Marvin Mandel and Harry R. Hughes. But he became known for an arrest he made while off duty.

Kenneth J. Aiden, a retired social worker who enjoyed woodworking, died of cancer Aug. 3 at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The longtime Northeast Baltimore resident was 63. Mr. Aiden, who was blind since birth, was born and raised in New Haven, Conn. He came to Baltimore in 1965 when he took a position as a program analyst with Volunteers in Service to America -- VISTA -- and traveled the nation monitoring federal welfare programs. He earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Maryland in 1971 and became a social worker in 1973 for the state's Department of Human Resources.