GREENSBURG, Ind. (AP) - Greensburg resident Leonard Schoettmer Jr. has spent many hours since late last year in his wood shop to complete a sculpture of a 6-foot-tall baby giraffe.
He is crafting the wooden animal to give to Riley Hospital for Children, to bring smiles to the young patients and to thank the staff for the excellent care they have provided three of his grandchildren who have undergone procedures there.
Since late last year, Schoettmer has sawed, glued, carved and sanded wood, and slowly transformed plain planks into the lifelike curves of the world’s tallest mammal.
A finished baby giraffe, which he made seven years ago when his grandson Colin underwent heart surgery at Riley, adorns his living room, near family photos and a rocking horse he also crafted.
Schoettmer, 60, owns Gold Key Home Inspections and sells equipment for agricultural buildings. He began carving animals when his youngest daughter, Lindsay, was in high school and started showing horses.
Lindsay needed a project to make money for a club, and Schoettmer decided to make rocking horses they could sell. When she got married about 15 years ago, he made carousel horses for wedding decorations.
Though he considers woodworking a hobby, he takes the projects seriously. He conducts research and makes meticulous plans and outlines of his projects.
“I bought every book I could find that talked about making carousel horses,” Schoettmer told the Greensburg Daily News.
Making the pattern takes almost as much time as doing the rough carving, he said.
The projects typically take between 100 and 150 hours, but Schoettmer takes his time, and said he sometimes walks away from the project, until inspiration strikes and he knows how to continue.
You get to a point where you don’t know what to do next, he said. So you lay down your tools and you come back a day or a week later.
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Information from: Greensburg Daily News, https://www.greensburgdailynews.com
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