“You can’t beat barn wood for the look and the character.”
WOODWORKING
WONDERS HIDDEN WITHIN JIM BROSAMER’S BARN IS A WORLD OF WOODWORKING WONDERS.
By Sara Hilton
There are hutches and checkerboards, birdhouses, desks, and even grandfather clocks made from barn wood. Most of the pieces have just a bit of delight sprinkled into them. There are little secret doors on clocks and tiny stone chimneys on birdhouses. There are wooden Christmas trees that light up and even barn wood bed frames, stools and signs. “I don’t just sit and watch TV very well, he laughed. "But this,” he said as he motioned to his work, “I love it. It is my pastime and hobby. I like the creativity of it. It’s relaxing.”
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Brosamer was first introduced to woodworking in shop class when he was a student at Tecumseh High School. While he went on to do other things, that one class pointed him into a direction that would determine his retirement years. “It
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piqued my interest,” he said. “I’ve been building things ever since, but when I retired I really started to get into it.” Brosamer’s creations are mainly made from recycled wood. “I feel like it’s necessary to repurpose,” he said. “You can’t beat barn wood for the looks and the character. I always prefer that when I can. But even old deck boards are great and can have amazing character if you put them together correctly.”
While the process of working with the often irregular barn wood takes more forethought than working with new wood, for Brosamer, the challenge is part of the fun. “I like to draw it out and plan it first. The planning is so important. I’ll see something and think, I could do that, but I want to make it my own. I enjoy that.” All of Brosamer’s creating and building required an outlet for selling. He can be found at farmer’s markets and he has regular customers who come to the barn to buy work. He also does custom work, most recently building an outdoor mud kitchen for children. This mini outdoor kitchen is perfect for make-believe and mud pies, a little woodworking wonder made to inspire a child to do the very thing Brosamer does every time he looks at a piece of old wood — to imagine, to dream, and to create. n
