Working with wood

Two men living in the Slayden area love to make things out of wood.

Charles King, retired from the Bank of Holly Springs, began working with wood from childhood, watching his grandfather Luther Jones make things. Later, when he began working with a lathe to make fine bowls, his neighbor William Valentine taught him about turning bowls, vases, candle holders and other works of art.

Joe Hurdle, now living in his grandfather’s house on South Slayden Road, started out working with sheet metal and steel, in which he made his living.

He started making things out of wood at age 10.

Both men still enjoy their hobbies, which Hurdle has made a business out of in the last decades.

“I was inspired by my grandfather,” King said. “We had primitive tools — draw bows and draw knives we used to make chair bottoms with.

“We’d go out in the bottom

and cut a log and lay it in a ditch coming out of a spring and weigh it down with rocks. We’d go get them when we needed them,” King said.

The springs kept the log from hardening so it could be worked. King said he grew up in the Potts Camp area near a spring.

His grandad was a farmer, a trapper and woodworker.

In 2001, King started working with lathes to make bowls and other fine art. As he progressed, he bought better tools and lathes.

“You learn as you go,” he said.

One thing that is different about King’s work is that he uses finishing oils for all his items.

“I do not use polyurethane or varnish as a finish,” he said. “I do have items that are finished with Butcher Block oil that is a food-safe finish.”

King made bowls at first then moved on to candlesticks and then hollow forms, pin boxes, cups, anything he could imagine, he tried to do it,

King said Hurdle turned woodworking into a business.

“He makes swings, folding stools and chairs, all kinds of stuff,” King said. “He got into making fish with keychain hooks on them.”

King is one of six boys raised by his late parents Dallas Thomas King and Emma Ilene Jones King.

He is now retired and age 73.

Hurdle said he worked steel all over the country back as far as 1970. Born on North Slayden Road in 1939, he moved to West Memphis, Ark. At 12 where he lived for 30 years. He moved back to his dad’s house on Mill Pond Road in 1980.

He said his favorite piece is a rocking horse he made for a grandchild.

Second favorites are large pieces of furniture made for his wife Shirley.

He made a free-standing closet and a sideboard for his wife.

Add to that rocking chairs, highchairs, kids’ toys with moving parts, bird houses, a windmill with moving rotor, and a dining room suit and set of chairs.

Hurdle also makes smaller pieces to be used as wall art.

And he has also worked as a carpenter and built large structures for Hudsonville Church, Concord Church and Slayden Church in the Mt. Pleasant/Slayden area.

Hurdle also built the activity center at the Holly Springs United Methodist Church and Liddy’s Pharmacy, now CVS, and a couple of houses at the golf course.

Retired at almost 83, Hurdle is still active in woodworking and serves on the Marshall County Zoning Commission.