In September 2013, Mike Stickles had a tree in his backyard that needed to be cut down. When it was, however, Stickles did not throw the felled timber to the curb for pickup. He had another idea.
Stickles, of Parkton, always has been something of a craftsman, starting when he was a child. He would spend time building and painting old racecars with his father, and as he reached adulthood, he made souping up cars a career.
So when he saw the tree trunk last year, he also saw a piece of art. He traded in his airbrush for a chain saw and made his vision a reality. He left the trunk wide and round at the bottom and engraved the Harley Davidson logo in it. Coming out of the wide bottom were carved motorcycle pistons with wooden flames shooting out.
"After that I decided, 'I need to do a bear, I need to do an eagle, I need to do a fish,'" Stickles, 47, said. "So I started out with the little things."
His many years of experience working on hot rods had prepared him well for his new wood-carving career. The motions in airbrushing a car, he said, are almost identical to those of a chain saw when carving.
"The hardest thing when I was starting out was being nervous about being a failure," he said. "But that didn't happen. I was just totally shocked. All of a sudden, [I] just found a knack."
In March, after having been carving for just six months, Stickles was invited to Carvapalooza in Ontario. With professional carvers from all over the world looking on at the weeklong competition, Stickles created an attention-grabber: a bench with huge flames up the back.
"I went from an amateur carver to leaving there feeling as if I'm professional because everybody was so happy and couldn't believe the piece, because I did something different than what everybody else was used to seeing," Stickles said. "And from there, that gave me the confidence that I could pretty much carve anything. … That was a great ride home."
Jeff Mohr, who has been carving for 24 years, was among those who noticed Stickles' work at the competition. "I thought he'd been carving for years," said Mohr, of Oxford, Wis. "The execution was so clean. Everybody was impressed because it was so different."
At Carvapalooza, Mohr and Stickles became quick friends. Stickles was an admirer of Mohr's work, and Mohr sensed Stickles' potential.
"I think he brings to the table a set of skills that most people don't have because of his abilities and bodywork" on cars, Mohr said. "He's really advanced that way, before he even started carving."
Stickles invited Mohr to Maryland to carve, and the two concocted a plan to develop a tool for simpler carving: a set of round metal pieces, attached to the belt of the chain saw, that helps take away wood more quickly and allows carvers to add patterns and details to their work. Similar tools already were available in Europe, but Stickles considered them too expensive.
So he and Mohr developed their own American-made version: the Savage Little Hoss mini gouge. Stickles worked to get the tool patented, and his Savage Power Tools business, which came into existence when the gouge did, is the only manufacturer in the United States to sell such a tool.
After a whirlwind first year in the carving world, Stickles now is working on his largest piece yet: a 20-foot soaring eagle in the Parkton parking lot shared by his father-in-law's machine shop and his wife's beauty salon. Upon completion, the piece will be moved to the driveway of his father-in-law's home. Until then, it continues to attract attention from nearly all passersby.
With a campground just down the street from the parking lot, Stickles said he has been approached by out-of-towners who are in awe of the looming bird carved out of a tree that once stood just a few feet away.
"The feeling is like a little kid at Christmastime getting a new toy," Stickles said of his interactions with admirers. "And when they leave, you're happy. You're thinking, 'That's pretty cool.' … And then it just makes you get really into your work."
As his list of customers continues to grow, Stickles said his wife, Winnie, and his daughter, Shannon, 16, have supported him in his new career.
"It's nice to do a piece and you come in and show them a picture, and they say, 'That's awesome,'" he said. "Because you need that."
Winnie, his wife of 20 years, is happy to lend her suggestions. "When he's carving something, it's just kind of telling him, 'This needs this,' or 'This needs that,'" she said. "It's always better to have two sets of eyes looking at something than one, so you can figure out what it needs."
Stickles even thought he'd try to teach Winnie to carve. "He got me all dressed and ready to carve, and then he took the saw and said, 'Here, let me show you how to do that,'" she recalled, laughing. "And then he was afraid I was going to hurt myself, so that was the end of that."