About The Master's Hands

This website features custom, handmade, repurposed wood decor and furnishings created from various salvaged buildings around the state of Indiana.  Antique doors are repurposed into new benches and barn wood becomes new home decor with the look and feel of something old and worn. Reclaimed barn wood from Indiana barns and structures is used in many of the featured pieces. ​ The mountain men carvings are hand carved in cottonwood bark, "found-wood" from along the shores of the Ohio River. 

​

The theme of repurposed is a great reflection for Master Woodworker, Don Stonecipher.  Don was raised in Southern Indiana and has always had a love of nature and the woods.  He grew up hunting and roaming the woods of Harrison, Crawford, and Dubois counties.  Early in life, woodworking came natural for Don, as well as his creative, artistic ability to see a finished product while others only saw a chunk of wood.  A fateful injury in 2005 changed Don’s course forever.  A neck and spinal cord injury left him partially paralyzed for a short time until surgery helped restore some of his mobility.  He was unable to return to his job and had little prognosis to ever regain feeling in the right side of his body.  Though woodworking had been a life-long hobby for Don, it now had new significance for him. 

After his injury, Don decided to attend the Marc Adams School of Woodworking (MASW) in Whiteland, Indiana, where his creativity and love of wood became an inspiration and aided in his physical therapy.  (See photos at right.)  Marc Adams and the instructors at MASW quickly recognized Don’s eagerness and natural ability to learn various carving and specialized woodworking techniques.  Given the nerve damage he had suffered and had never regained feeling in his right arm and hand, it was challenging for Don to work with his hands, but over the course of two years, he completed the MASW Master’s program, earning a certificate as a Master Woodworker.  The school also chose Don as the 2007 Student of the Year Award recipient.

Don has continued to pursue several forms of woodworking which he learned while attending MASW, such as chip carving and using hand tools to make dovetail joinery.  He has settled into several areas of woodworking using reclaimed materials and “found” wood. He relates his carvings to his own story of finding new life in a piece of wood which has seemingly lost its purpose.  Others might see a chunk of bark, fallen from a tree and useless, but Don sees it as an opportunity to create something, giving new purpose to something lifeless.  Through the silly, sometimes whimsical faces and names he gives to his “men in the bark,” Don enjoys the smiles they bring to customers who purchase one of his unique, hand carved faces.  He also receives great satisfaction in seeing the rejuvenated sheen and patena from the reclaimed barn wood once it has passed through the planer and the rough, weatherd exterior has been removed.  There is a special beauty in this kind of wood that compares to no other.