Lewes woodworker turns out creations
Jim Whattam knows a good turn when he sees one.
Four years ago, the retired attorney took up wood turning as a hobby, and he’s been cranking out stunning creations ever since. Whattam said he is self taught with a lot of help from YouTube.
One of his latest pieces, the Harbor of Refuge Lighthouse, earned kudos from the Delaware River and Bay Lighthouse Foundation, and three of his sculptures entered in this year’s Delaware State Fair all took home blue ribbons. One was a replica of the Delaware Breakwater East End Lighthouse.
“It’s a completely different type of woodworking,” Whattam said. “You can take something square, put it on a lathe and turn it into something round.”
The Lewes resident lights up when he is in his workshop, an 1,800-square-foot section of basement that is a masterpiece in and of itself with tools and machinery covering just about every inch. “This has blown up since we moved here,” he said.
He and his wife, Deborah, retired to Lewes in 2012 after years of vacationing along the coast from their Baltimore area home – not far from where the 72-year-old grew up. After finishing secondary school, he stayed in the area attending Towson University for his undergraduate degree. Then it was onto University of Maryland Law School before embarking on a career in labor law.
Woodworking has been part of his life since he was 9. His father, a master carpenter, taught him the art of flat carpentry, he said, and over the years, he has built plenty of entertainment centers and kitchen cabinets for friends – just for fun, never taking a dime.
“I’ve taken it to a substantially different level than my father did,” Whattam said with a chuckle and an irrepressible jovial spirit that can put anyone at ease.
Whattam shows how he can reshape a block of wood into a bowl by locking it into the lathe. A vast selection of handheld tools displayed along a nearby wall helps him create his special designs.
“It’s been a lot of fun in the years that I’ve been doing it. I really enjoy it,” he said.
He proudly displays his work below a sign that says “Stuff I made … Really.” The shelves beneath are bursting with Christmas ornaments, spinning tops, bowls, vases, Japanese puzzle boxes, and plenty of pens that he created from blocks of acrylic. He said his four grandchildren get a kick out of the selection of Thor’s hammers he’s made.
When Whattam made the lighthouses, he used a process called segmented woodturning – a form of woodturning that creates striking vases and bowls with vivid patterns of varying colors.
He takes small pieces of wood and glues them together into a ring, then sets those rings on top of each other in descending or increasing order to make the object wider or narrower. Everything is smoothed out by the lathe.
“The big lighthouse was done that way. That’s 600 pieces of wood that was done that way,” he said. “It took a while, about five weeks working off and on.”
Photographs during a recent tour of the lighthouse helped him with the number of windows, fence posts and other details that make the lighthouse unique.
It was too late to enter the Harbor of Refuge Lighthouse in this year’s Delaware State Fair, but the piece has earned him plenty of local kudos.
“Through the great cooperation of the foundation, they were extraordinarily helpful throughout the whole process to make sure I had the access I needed to do it correctly,” Whattam said.
He’s not sure what he’ll make next, but judging from his display, whatever he does will be no less impressive,
“I only do things that are fun these days. I don’t do anything that I don’t find fun,” he said. “It really can be a hobby that appeals to everybody.”
