STAFF PROFILE: Craftsman shares how-to knowledge with world

By Leslie Kostal
September 08, 2011

Paul Mayne/Western News

“I like to make my tenons a little on the tight side to start, then fine-tune the fit with a chisel or block plane.”

If you’re a fan of Canadian Home Workshop, you would have already noted this instruction as it appeared in the November 2009 issue. From inside out, meticulously and literally described, Rick Campbell shares his master woodworking techniques with a wine rack – crafted as a suggested Christmas gift – all for less than $25.

During the past 12 years, Campbell, Financial Analysis and Budget Administration manager at Western, has produced more than 100 articles for various woodworking magazines in Canada and the United States, showcasing furniture and home-improvement projects, articulating how-to instructions with precision and clarity.

“Quite frequently, they’ll ask for ideas,” Campbell says. “(Typically) you might get an email saying they’ve got an issue coming up and they’d like a certain type of project. You have a very short period of time to design it, build it and then write the article and do drawings and so forth within a very condensed period of time.”

To complement Campbell’s keen interest in Canadian and American history, he enjoys building historical reproductions. “The magazines may do an issue on Canadian heritage, for example, and they’ll ask for a reproduction of a particular piece of furniture,” he explains.

Provided only with a grainy photograph, Campbell reconstructed a desk made in Halifax in the 1800s. Referred to as the “Hepplewhite desk” – named after George Hepplewhite, one of the most prominent furniture-makers of the Georgian period – it is one of Campbell’s favourite pieces.

“Actually, I have that desk in my house,” Campbell says. “But you’d probably be surprised; I’ve very few of my projects in my house. I’m too close to the work and every time I pass something that I’ve constructed, all I see is what I would do differently.”

Campbell has had no formal training. His father was his inspiration.

“I remember at a very young age, he used to build amazing furniture and he really didn’t have any tools. To this day I don’t know how he was able to accomplish what he did with so little.” Other than pounding nails into a 2x4, Campbell doesn’t remember a first project. But after years of building – father and son – woodworking took a serious turn when he and his wife bought their first home in Toronto.

“It was a 100-year fixer-upper. I put together a small shop in a basement in a coal room. I couldn’t even stand up fully,” he remembers.

But today in London, Campbell has a fully equipped, neat and colour-coordinated workshop in his backyard. Depending on the project, “I may put a weekend, a 12-hour day … work some evenings,” he says.

And then again, he may not venture out for several weeks. “It’s sporadic.”

You can count on taking in the aroma of freshly planed lumber, you may get a whiff of Campbell’s preferred cedar and cherry, but avoid fresh walnut and teak which “are a couple of lumber types that are not too pleasant,” he says.

Campbell grew up with many hand tools, but he’s now more inclined to use power tools. “They’re like your children. I don’t think I could give any of them up.”

His ‘other’ children, two daughters, have also worked with him in his shop, including producing ‘bug barns’ on the Home and Garden television program. “There was a program about 10 years ago,” Campbell says, “which was done by Jon Eakes. He filmed an episode in my workshop dealing with workshop safety with kids and so forth.”

Campbell’s most recent project, to be featured in Canadian Home Workshop, is a work desk designed for the challenges of someone in a wheelchair. Because of the requirements – easily dismantled, adjusted and relocated – he applied his knowledge of campaign desks used during the Civil War; how they were thrown together quickly and moved to other locations.

Although Campbell has had a heap of woodworking successes, he hasn’t contemplated it as a full-time career. “I think it would take the pleasure out of it if it were a job,” he says. “It’s a bit of a luxury to be able to do it just when you feel like it.”

Leslie Kostal, web administrative assistant, Department of Economics, writes periodic pieces profiling Western staff members. If you, or someone you know, has an interesting story to tell, please email her at Leslie.Kostal@uwo.ca.