Uniting Through Woodwork
On a humid morning last month,
I took a walk to Mighty Oak
Roasters on 24th Avenue, ordered
an iced latte and took a
seat on a wood bench beneath
a tree in front of the rustic shop.
I was there to meet Astoria resident
John Bohlmeyer, president of Astoria
Woodworkers Collective.
Last August, Bohlmeyer posted on
the Astoria Reddit to see if anyone
would be interested in joining a local
woodworking group, and he organized
a meetup at Astoria Park with other interested
and aspiring woodworkers. It
wasn’t long before meetups became a
regular occurrence and the number of
members grew.
“Woodworking gives someone a
chance to use their hands and to make
something physical. They can feel what
it's like to make something,” Bohlmeyer
said.
Nearly a year after that first Reddit
post, Astoria Woodworkers Collective
is going strong. The group meets regularly,
which gives members a chance to
learn about new woodworking techniques,
complete with demonstrations.
Plus, the group takes on projects such
as building shelves for the Astoria Food
Pantry’s Free Store on Steinway and
hosting free woodworking classes on
Zoom.
“Part of our mission is to be a resource
for local nonprofits and mutual
aid groups so we hope to do more of
those types of projects. It’s a great way
for members to gain experience, too,”
Bohlmeyer said.
The collective spent months planning
the renovation, and then about
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18 to 20 volunteers worked eight-hour
days over two weekends to make the
shelves and renovate the Free Store’s
space.
Additionally, the collective hosts free
online courses to help people sharpen
their woodworking skills. Recently,
they taught a spoon carving class and
a course on finishing and ebonizing, a
process for staining wood.
The collective gets involved with the
western Queens community in other
ways, too, such as running a booth at
the Crescent Street Block Party in June
and volunteering at the Astoria Park Alliance’s
cleanup on Earth Day.
According to Bohlmeyer, a third of
the collective’s members are beginners
while most of the leadership team
members got into woodworking as
kids or teenagers.
“I think everyone on our leadership
team that has woodworking experience
was in a similar situation as me
— we all grew up with access to space
to experiment as we slowly acquired
tools. Some of us were watching siblings
bring home projects from shop
class, others’ parents had shops in their
basements, so it was very natural to just
hang around those spaces and start to
tinker. It all comes back to the space existing
in the first place,” Bohlmeyer said.
Currently, there are no public wood
shops or spaces to practice woodworking
in Astoria, and that’s something the
collective wants to change.
“Astoria has a very diverse crowd of
people and a lot of makers and trade
people, so it is surprising that there is
no community shop to explore that,”
Bohlmeyer said.
According to Bohlmeyer, part of
the organization’s mission is to make
woodworking more accessible to
northwestern Queens. The collective,
BY ALLISON KRIDLE
EXPLORE YOUR BORO
Collective brings craft to the neighborhood