Inside Waterwood, Dennis Schryver’s side yard serves as the common meeting place for the guys on his block. Everyone seems welcome, especially if they can offer any news, or even better, an excellent joke. Imagine the TV show Cheers, except the setting is in the woods, the jokes are cruder (and better), there are always dogs running around under feet, and the central character is a man carving a large wooden horse.
Why a wooden horse?
“Something to do?” responds Schryver, as he eyeballs the horse head, decides one side is a bit uneven, and files it down by hand.
As the other guys joke, talk politics, and just chat, they also watch Schryver slowly experiment in his creation.
“I’ve never done this before” says Schryver, “I just try a little of this and try a little of that.”
“How long have I been woodworking? Damn. 45 years, at least” says Schryver.
He was one of 11 children and his father was a cabinet maker. After Basic Training at Lackland Air Force Base, Schryver spent 8 years in the the Service as a Military Police officer. When he got out he worked in different cabinet shops making custom furniture. But he never worked professionally sculpting large objects out of wood.
The horses are actually rocking horses. Schryver starts off with 2×6 lumber and glues the boards together to make fat boards. The body, head, and legs are all separate pieces that are glued and screwed together. All the different parts are filed down to the point that most people would never find the seems. Schryver experiments with aesthetics and the way different designs work out. Each horse ends up being made different than the last.
Other than his imagination, Schryver relies on a simple set of pictures.
“I’ve got a horse calendar right here” laughs Schryver flipping through the pictures of different horses. He’ll look at the Month of March, then grab his rasp and shape his wood horse to the look he wants.
While the guys sitting around the table talk city politics, Schryver will rub wood filler into cracks, take a file to an area he doesn’t like, or smooth a section down with sandpaper. Like a true perfectionist, he says he has to paint the horses rather than stain them in order to hide the imperfections. The imperfections that no one but the maker would ever see.
To finish his first set of rocking horses, Schryver used teddy bear eyes and wig hair. He even cut apart the floor mat from inside his truck to make a saddle for one of the horses.
“I wanted real leather saddles and bridals” he said. “Next time, though.”
Thanks to Schryver’s artistic skills, two very lucky kids will be getting excellent Christmas gifts this year.
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