Meet The Maker #thinblueline
Just outside of Birmingham, Alabama is the city of Hoover. It's a suburb of the Magic City, and home to not only a man who is a tremendous woodworker and maker, but a defender of our nation, and now defender of his local community. Mike Jeffcoat of the aptly named Leatherneck Garage is the featured woodworker on this weeks edition of Meet the Maker. I first met Mike this past year at The Woodworking Show in Atlanta while manning the Southern Woodworkers booth together. Right off the bat, you could tell this was a guy who knew what hard work was all about, but level headed with a sense for the precision that's needed when making a project come out how you want it to. Mike is in a new shop at a new house, and it's currently a detached 14'x9' insulated building with 60A service run to it.
He plans on an a 16'x14' addition next spring, so that should be a lot of fun for us all to watch as it progresses. As a police officer by "day" (on night shift currently) Mike has to be very strategic when it comes to time in the shop. Balancing a career as a police officer, a beautiful family, and woodworking business can be incredibly demanding.
Mike got into woodworking officially back in 2015. "I always liked to make stuff, but I never bothered to learn the proper skills. In 2015 I joined the Alabama Woodworkers Guild, and everything took off from there" he remarked. Between YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Guilds, and just this incredibly awesome woodworking community we are all apart of, the knowledge is there for the taking for anyone who wants it. When Mike gets in the shop and gets the radio cranked up it's 60's/70's rock, dubstep, or one of the great podcasts we have going on in our community (you can see a link to a blog on the best Southern podcasters here, including Mike's currently on hiatus, but destined to return soon podcast "Making Time").
The above is just the tip of the iceberg on some of the fantastic work the Mike does. He says the number of outlets from which he draws inspiration are endless. YouTube, Pinterest, and the fellow woodworkers in the community, plus the many things we all find inspiration in daily whether we are at work, out to dinner, anywhere you go, you can find inspiration if you know what you are looking for.
Thanks again Mike for agreeing to do Meet The Maker. Thanks for your service to our country. Thanks for protecting our communities. Thanks.
If you want to see more about make you can head to LeatherneckGarage.com, or check out his Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube pages.
Thanks again for hanging out for another Meet The Maker, stay tuned next week for another great maker.
"The things I make may be for others, but how I make them is for me." – Tony Konovaloff