Dave Ramsey

After careers in cancer research, and then hospital administration, former Illinois native Dave Ramsey finally retired.

Now the Rio Verde artist works almost as many hours a day as before he retired. But there is one difference. He will never call it work.

He’s having way too much fun.

He has discovered the joy of woodturning.

From deep within himself, Ramsey has awakened a creative ability in artistry that he never dreamed he had.

And the exquisite, seamlessly smooth subjects of his creation would stand out in any décor, from ultramodern to Southwest.

The accidental discovery later in his life of his ability, and his endless creativity in woodturning, was a surprise and pleasure.

“Before that, my idea of woodworking was building shelves in the garage, or something like that,” he laughs.

During his son’s college break, Ramsey had taken him to a specialty wood store to get supplies for a college engineering project.

“I had never seen beautiful wood before,” Ramsey says. “And I saw this wonderful wood and all kinds of really exotic woods.”

Intrigued, he bought some walnut and, using 75-year-old tools he had inherited, tested himself by making a small jewel box.

“I was about two years from retirement, and looking for something to do besides playing golf all the time,” he recalls. “I like golf, but I don’t want to play it every day of the week.” 

It was just a hobby at first, but soon evolved into creating vessels and bowls on a woodturning machine.

“I never got into it with the idea of selling. I made these things and didn’t think about what I was going to do with them. I gave some to my kids and relatives.

“And then one day a good friend of ours was over, saw a piece I had, and said, ‘I’d like to buy that, how much would you sell it for?’  After all her friends saw it in her house, I was getting calls to make one for them.”

In 10 years Ramsey has made at least 408 wood-turned vessels, bowls, and other art objects.

He is still known to sell them right off his end table. Recently a friend fell in love with a large vessel he had and begged to buy it.

Afterward Ramsey’s wife, B.J. Griffith, lamented, “You sold my favorite piece.”

“So I had to make her another one,” he says, grinning sheepishly.

Ramsey does not want to do mass production. He feels it would compromise the quality of the pieces just to sell. He also wants his work to be excellent. A piece doesn’t go out of his workshop until he considers it perfect.

“I want two things,” he says. “I want to be an artist, and I want to sell it. I know good woodturners who are earning their living doing this, but I don’t need it for my living. I have a pension, so I can do anything I want.”

And Ramsey does not hoard his secrets. He willingly shares the knowledge he has gained over the years with others.

“I run a woodturning school here, for those who wish to come out and study,” he says. “I can take somebody who has some sense of woodworking and turn that person into a world-class woodturner in about a month. Sort of like an apprenticeship, teaching all the secrets.”

He confides that “most of the secret is work, work and more work. And total attention to detail. No detail is too small. Because if you leave a few little things wrong in your piece they get spotted immediately.”

He also is a member of the American Association of Woodturners and writes articles for its journal and for other related publications.

Ramsey’s workshop is just a step away, in his garage, where his four table saws share space with his workbenches.

The woodturning machine is in the smaller garage, where he has commercial-size ventilator fans that draw the sawdust out of the garage when he works.

With the machine spinning, he eases a sharp chisel up against the wood with a steady hand, trimming mere fractions of an inch at a time to form the curvature of the piece.

“Soft wood does not turn well,” he explains. “I have to use hard woods.”

And his cabinets are bursting with exotic hard woods from all over the world.

The fascinating blends and whorls of the woods in his finished pieces are not accidental. Ramsey loves to experiment and try new combinations.

“I don’t do many turnings with one type of wood, I mostly build things up (in layers), because that’s where the fun of it is, to make designs,” he explains.

To achieve that effect, Ramsey glues several different types of wood together of various widths, like layers of a cake.

He then cuts the wood into small pieces that he glues together to form a circle, or ring. The rings then are glued in layers to build up the walls of the vessel, and the piece is turned on the woodturner after each layer has dried, to smooth and shape it.

This is called segmented -- or constructive – turning. Depending on the design and height, a vessel could have dozens of graduated layers. Thus, a vessel could take several weeks, or even months, to create.

Some of his vessels are made with what appear to be intricate “pictures” painted on them, like the petroglyphs, elk or buffalo. But they are actually permanent inlay sections, which he creates separately and fits into the pattern of the wood in the vessel.

He makes the inlays by grinding the desired wood -- often black ebony, for the contrast -- into sawdust, and mixing it with epoxy, then drying it overnight into a woody hardness.

He can make all his inlays for a vessel or bowl in one long block, and then cut them in uniform slices on his table saw, like cutting cookie dough.

He especially enjoys making the rustic-looking art pieces, because “that’s part of the fun, to make a design of something that has some kind of history, something more than just a design,” he says.

And that creativity is all Ramsey’s.

“All the things I do are my own design,” he says. “I don’t copy from anyone.”

In whimsical moods, he lets his imagine go in a different direction.

“I like to dream up stuff,” he grins.

He tells the story about one of his favorites, that he created many years ago, a stack of pancakes and sausage on a plate, a fork, knife and spoon, coffee cup and syrup pitcher, all arranged on a breakfast tray, everything actual size.

It sold in a gallery in Des Moines within minutes after he had dropped it off. For 10 years he wondered who had bought it.

Shortly after moving to Rio Verde he attended a party at the home of another retired resident, who was showing her home to the guests, “and I turned around and there on the dresser was my ‘Pancake Breakfast,’ he recalls with a delighted laugh.

“I was really so pleased to find out where that thing went. I loved it.”

Ramsey’s work has been displayed in galleries all over the country, and some of his pieces are part of Hillary Clinton’s White House collection.

He has displayed his work at Valley art walks, including Rio Verde and Scottsdale, and has a web site, www.finewooddesign.net, that shows some of his most popular pieces.

And the referrals he gets through word of mouth keep him busy.

“I can design anything,” he says of the limitless ideas he has.

“And I can make anything I want,” he adds with well-deserved satisfaction.

This artist was featured May 2006.