From school bus to woodshop

By Jennifer McBride - Leader Staff

The full-length, yellow school bus built in 1983 doesn't look like it belongs next to a workshop. But instead of padded seats and abandoned Snoopy lunch boxes, Pablo handyman Joe Johns has stuffed every inch of this bus with several tons of woodworking tools, knickknacks and every issue of the magazine Fine Woodworking ever published.

Johns collects antique tools of all sizes. His accumulations include a 1946 and 1947 Delta Unisaw (both fully restored). He also owns a 1959 Delta bandsaw and seven other pieces of vintage woodworking machinery including jointers, planers, a jigsaw, a mortising machine, a Delta belt sander and a 1923 pedal-powered scroll saw.

Johns didn't always keep his extra tools in a school bus. In 2001, Johns moved all his saws and jointers from his woodshop to the "yeller bus" and prepared to move back to his home state, Virginia. After being loaded, the vehicle weighed nearly 30,000 lb. Several hundred miles and bus mishaps later, Johns reached Virginia, only to turn around two months later and eventually pull back into his own driveway in Pablo.

Unfortunately, Johns had already sold the building housing his woodshop — now Zimmer's Tackle — leaving him with no way to store his formidable array of equipment. Johns laid the foundation for his new woodshop himself, but for now, the tools stay packed in the bus.

When completed, his new woodworking home will be 2,640 square feet, but until then, Johns works out of a shop he shares with his father. The space is entirely too small for Johns' liking — after all, it doesn't have room for the three table saws, two band saws, three joiners, three plane saws, two lathes, an air compressor, drill press and sanding station waiting in the wings.

Johns' entire attempt to move to Virginia is chronicled on his website, www.twistedknotwoodshop.com.

"It's even 80 percent true," Johns joked. Of course, he retains the right to include what he calls "writer's embellishments."

Johns' website is home to a mailing list for 260 active woodworkers across the world. Though most of the members are live in the U.S., other correspondents come from Canada, Australia, Ireland and England. He said that the woodworking community is always willing to give assistance and advice to one another.

"I've never known any of them to be spiteful," Johns said. "Or to be ax murderers."

The website also hosts pictures of his projects and several of Johns' yarns, ranging from stories about Internet scammers to his first shop class. Twsitedknotwoodshop.com has been around since 1997, and was one of the earliest woodworking websites in the nation.

His website doesn't include much information about his pre-woodworking days. Before moving to Montana, Johns worked for the U.S. Federal Government. After getting fed up with pushing paper, Johns decided to move to Pablo and start work as a handyman.

"I do everything that has anything to do with a house," Johns said.

Johns enjoys his job because of the variety.

"Every day is something completely different," he said.

Though he also works with plumbing and electricity, Johns' true love (next to his wife, which he affectionately calls "Her Nagness") is wood. Johns' entire house is a testament to this dedication. Almost anything wooden — from the bookshelves to the three-piece entertainment center to the crown molding on the walls — is handmade. He describes his style as Victorian, though the new woodshop will be "Westorian" with wild west elements straight out of a saloon.

Most of Johns' projects — inside and outside his home — use reclaimed barnwood, which is easy on the wallet and the environment.

"It's just not a good thing to throw away something that can be used," Johns said.

Johns also appreciates the "character and colors" of reclaimed barnwood, which he said adds a unique flavor to everything he does.

Johns resourcefulness doesn't extend to just his materials. He's also constructed several of his own tools, some of which have been featured in woodworking magazines. After hours of work cutting out letters for a sign with a scroll saw gave him a kinked back, Johns constructed a table out of an old exercise bicycle, which he calls the "ghastly mechanical exercise … machine from hell." Johns hauled the bike home from the dump without being quite sure what he wanted to do with it.

"The thing was ungodly heavy," he said.

The reconstructed scroll saw's speed is controlled by switches on the foot pedal, so he can use his hands to guide the wood. Though the resulting tangle of metal looks a little like a hunchbacked school desk eating a shovel, Johns said the saw is easy on the back, if not on the eyes. The sitting scroll saw station will be featured in American Woodworker in a future issue.

Most of Johns' favorite projects have an emotional resonance — whether building a library for his wife after she earned her psychology degree or a handmade urn from Rock Maple and Honduran Mahogany for a friend's father, who died of cancer.

One time, Johns said, a man brought in a table that his daughter had grown up with and loved. Though the father wasn't willing to let his girl take the valuable antique to college, he wanted to give her something to remind her of home. Johns said it was challenging to copy the piece down to the inch without damaging the table.

Johns is currently working on a project for a woman in the valley who is making a rocking chair for her son serving with the Army in Iraq. She's doing most of the carpentry herself, but she hired Johns to do the lathe-work.

Though Johns sometimes sells the pieces he makes, more often, he finds it hard to part with work that haven't been commissioned by his customers.

"I'm kind of a miser," Johns said. "After you put so much heart and soul into something, it's like giving up your kids."