Torrey shares love of woodworking
Harvey Torrey has decades of experience in woodworking, and gives away his work to family members and to the church. (Press photo by Molly Moser)
By Molly Moser
After long days working as a mechanic at Brown’s Sales and Leasing during the 1980s and 90s, Harvey Torrey would return to his Guttenberg home to spend evenings in his basement, where he continued his work on cars. In uniform he may have been working on alternators and radiators, but in his basement he worked with cherry, maple, and walnut.
As a teenager, Torrey built two 14-foot boats with his father. “From there, I’m self taught,” says the experienced wood worker. When he married his wife, Karen, over 50 years ago, she asked him to make her a shadow box. He did, and then he made much, much more.
As the decades passed, Torrey made cars, trucks, tractors, wagons, golf carts, and even a four-piece train set. He’s used patterns for animals, airplanes, clocks, rocking horses, and even a dollhouse for his granddaughter – down to the individual shingles, working light fixtures, and wallpaper. A ’32 Chevy coupe complete with a steering wheel and pinstripes is one of his favorites, as is a bow tail car that works like a three-dimensional puzzle.
In his basement workshop, Torrey uses saws, sanders, a planer and a drill press to make works of art from locally sourced wood. A china hutch, end tables, several chests of drawers, a kitchen table, and even a little heart-shaped box made for his wife fill the couple’s home, where they’ve lived since they began their marriage at St. Joseph’s Church in Garnavillo.
When the Torreys moved into their home, they rented just the lower floor and didn’t have the heated basement space. “He made his first gun cabinet in the kitchen,” Karen recalls, sitting at her grandmother’s antique table surrounded by her grandmother’s chairs. An icebox and buffet, also family heirlooms crafted from wood, adorn the room. “We were just married and we didn’t have any kids. I was either a little off or a lot in love,” she laughs.
Torrey was born and raised in Guttenberg, and his first job was at Kunzman’s Chevrolet Garage. Using skills he collected there and throughout his career as a mechanic, he once crafted a slide-in camper for weekend trips with his wife and two daughters. They’d travel to nearby trout streams, where Darcy and Brenda floated plastic boats while their father fished.
“I never made anything to sell because that would be work, and I didn’t want any work,” he chuckles. Torrey has made a habit of giving away his wood crafts to family members and to the church, donating many times to the St. Mary’s Fall Festival silent auction, as well as to the St. Mary’s Extravaganza and to My School Preschool, when it was in operation.
Torrey has been sharing his woodworking wisdom with grandson Beau Cline, a 15-year-old freshman at Clayton Ridge High School. Cline is a Boy Scout working toward becoming an Eagle Scout, and together with his grandfather he’s made a wooden airplane, a car, and a series of plaques for Boy Scout troop awards.
“If I stay steady at it, a couple of hours a day, it takes about a month,” says Torrey, referring to the time he spends making just one of his wooden vehicles. “I like making these little things the best.” After patiently working each piece, he signs it with ink or a wood burning tool. Although he’s slowed down in the workshop because of tremors in his hands, he already has his next project up his sleeve – a Ford convertible.
