Today we’d like to introduce you to Robert Hodge.
Alright, thank you for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Ever since I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with creating and building items. As a toddler, I’d help build our treehouse or repair vehicles. In middle school, I built a paintball field in our pasture. One summer, home from college, is when I got fascinated by woodworking. I began drawing up some plans to build a poker table. I borrowed my father’s circular saw, drill, router, and sander and ended up creating a pretty nice-looking table!
I’d have to say it probably held up better than my liver did during the next few years of school. Fast forward to 2011. I’ve now been working a good job here in Houston as a Design Engineer in the oil industry for the past 4 years. I was currently living in an apartment and doing some woodworking on my front porch, mainly with hand tools. Nothing serious, just a shelf here, a small cabinet there. My proudest piece was a small rocking horse that I made for my nephew for Christmas.
As my lease at the apartment complex expired, I knew the rates were going to increase quite a bit as my wife (girlfriend at the time) had managed to get an amazing deal for the past 18 months. We decided it was time to bite the bullet and look at buying a house. We ended up getting a foreclosure which needed quite a bit of work. The next year or so was a blur, as I was constantly watching YouTube trying to figure out the proper way to remove tile, tape, and mud sheetrock, build a walk-in shower…. the list goes on and on.
By this point, I had already claimed our two-car garage with various tools and home repair supplies. In 2013, I had the opportunity to attend a woodworking convention here in Houston. This is where I discovered my passion for woodturning. I was walking amongst all the various vendors and came across a group of, how to put it politely, “experienced” men teaching other attendees how to turn a pen on the lathe.
I was a bit out of place being 30 years of age but decided to go ahead and sign up to take a lesson. As my turn came up, I stepped up to the lathe and listened to the instructions given to me. As I stuck the sharp high-speed steel tool into the chunk of wood rotating at over 1,500 rotations per minute I knew I was hooked. Within 30 minutes I had a fully functional pen! Nearly instant gratification!
After that experience, I joined the club, The Gulf Coast Woodturners Association, which met once a month and would demonstrate different techniques I soon wanted to know everything about. All I wanted to do from then on was woodturner. I didn’t even have a lathe! I would constantly watch Craigslist (yes, this was before Facebook Marketplace) for a lathe or other wood-turning tools.
Not many weeks later, I saw a post from someone with loads of free wood they wanted to get rid of. From the pictures I saw, the wood grain looked beautiful. A rich red and brown in the heartwood or center of the log surrounded by white and creamy sapwood underneath the bark. I had to have it. I drove my Dodge Charger to the address and filled the trunk and backseat with 18-20 inch diameter logs. Now I had no excuse. I had to buy a lathe.
Little did I know after spending a few hundred dollars on a lathe from Harbor Freight that this was only the beginning…. No one mentioned all the turning tools needed (or wanted), the chucks used to keep the wood from flying off the lathe, or the grinder needed to keep the tools sharp.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
I began diving head first into learning as much as possible for the next 4 years until my home flooded during Hurricane Harvey in August of 2017. All that work from restoring our home from its foreclosure state down the drain… or creek. We had about 2 feet of water in our house. Like many of the flooded homes, we were not in a flood plain and didn’t have flood insurance.
So, I was back at it again with my family and quite a few volunteers that I’ll never be able to repay, mucking out the house, and throwing away just about everything I owned. Luckily, the large tools which I had acquired at the time survived for the most part (besides having to replace my bandsaws motor which rusted to the point of not turning). I’d get off work for the next two years and travel home to do more work.
As 2019 approached, our home was pretty much complete and I finally found some time to get back to woodturning, and did I ever. During my two-year hiatus from the lathe, I watched many wood-turning YouTubers turning beautiful items out of wood and many using the tools incorrectly. I thought to myself, “When I can get back to turning, I could make that, or show this technique.” That was when my YouTube channel was born.
HodgePodge WoodWorks. I put out 5 videos in 5 weeks and then life happened again. I just didn’t have the time to deal with woodturning a piece, learning to video edit efficiently, and juggling being a husband and father of three kids (11, 12, and 15 yrs old). There were just too many after-school activities.
One night before bed, my wife mentioned to me, “you could always wake up early and do woodturning”. Why didn’t I think of that?! Not to mention, this was about the time that the world was put in lockdown due to COVID. I ended up working from home for about 18 months meaning I had loads more time to woodturning since I didn’t have to commute to work… or shower…. as much.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
At the recent craft shows I’ve attended, I often get asked, “How do you do that!?” Well, in layman’s terms, I often say I take wood that I usually find off the Facebook marketplace for free and uncover the beauty of what’s hidden inside. If they want to know, I’ll always point out that I’ve got YouTube videos of nearly all the items I’ve got for sale.
In woodturning, you often find two types of woodturners. The hobbyist that will go out in the shop now and then and just want to make some sawdust (us woodturners call them shavings) or the individual that has made woodturning their passion. One who could spend their entire waking moments doing all things woodturning. I know I’m the latter, just ask my wife.
Every artistic piece I turn has been floating around in my head for hours if not days as I contemplate various changes in shape or luster that I want to finish the product to have. Half the time the final product looks nothing like what I had in mind but that is really up to the wood itself and what shape it wants to become.
What are your plans for the future?
At this point in my YouTube career, I’ve uploaded 150 videos and accrued over 500,000 views and I’m approaching 5,000 subscribers. I’ve also amassed over 150 wood-turned items! My wife said she doesn’t need any more wooden bowls so I decided to begin selling my work. I began researching how to go about creating a website and brand, then got a URL set up to sell my work online.
Just this past holiday season, I registered at a couple of holiday markets and did reasonably well selling my work! The future looks bright and I’ve got a couple of larger craft fairs coming up early in 2023. As my skills improve I hope to dabble in more artistic pieces and hopefully enter them into various galleries around the Houston location.
Outside of just selling my work, once my kids are out of the house in the next couple of years, I plan to get much more involved in the wood-turning community. I’d like to take up a position in our local woodturning club and possibly even the national club as well, the American Associations of Woodturners or AAW.
Pricing:
- Varies $25-$600
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.hodgepodgeww.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hodgepodgeww/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HodgePodgeww
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/HodgePodgeWoodWorks
