By Darrell Halen
Staff Writer

Observer/Bruce Preston Pelham woodworker Charles Dick created this chess set. The pieces were carved from walnut and maple and weighted down with lead.

Observer/Bruce Preston Dick considers this frame, depicting characters from "Alice in Wonderland," to be his finest work.

Since he began seriously working with wood about 35 years ago, Pelham’s Charles Dick, 71, has created hundreds of plaques and other objects, and he’s given away many of them.

The fact that he suffered three strokes doesn’t keep him him from enjoying his hobby.

“I just feel good about doing it,” he said. “When I sit here (working), my troubles are gone.”

Much of what he’s created has brought joy to others. Dick, who works out of his Mammoth Road home, has created hundreds of wood plaques featuring images of popular characters such as Mickey Mouse, Dora the Explorer, Baby Pluto and Michigan J. Frog.

He woodburns an alreadymade image to a plaque and paints within the lines. Many of them have been given as greeting cards to his grandchildren.

“Instead of throwing them in the trash when they’re through with it, they hang them on the wall,” said Dick, who, along with his wife, Pat, has five grandchildren.

He’s also handed plaques to supermarket employees at the checkout line and as an extra tip to waitresses.

“It’s to show appreciation,” Dick said. “I love giving them away. They love receiving them. It makes me feel good.”

Through the years, Dick has accumulated various tools in his home and has created a variety of objects.

He has a chessboard that he designed, along with pieces he carved from walnut and maple. He’s made wooden badges for retiring policemen in Hudson and Nashua.

He created the logo for Pelham Bank and Trust, and carved a company sign that used to hang outside the office of the bank’s president, the late Louis Fineman.

Dick also enjoys creating names signs from a single piece of wood. He sent one to former Presidential candidate Ross Perot, who left a thank-you message on Dick’s answering machine, and former President Jimmy Carter, who sent a letter of appreciation.

He considers one of his finest pieces to be a picture frame featuring images from the “Alice in Wonderland” story. It frames a drawing of the Cheshire cat, created by a friend of his, Disney illustrator Mark Mitchell of Stoneham, Mass.

Dick said his strokes have left him feeling frequently dizzy, and he suffers double vision when he looks to the right. He’s given up using his lathes, and was reluctant to carve again, but he’s gradually getting back into it.

Still, he finds that he can keep his hands steady when he carves or uses his woodburning set.

“I can barely sign my name, my handwriting is so bad I can hardly read it myself,” Dick said. “And yet when I have the wood burning tool in my hand, sitting here, I have complete accuracy. It’s amazing to me that I can control it with the way that it is.”

After he suffered a stroke, he finished making a Harry Potter walking cane that he sent to J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. Despite the stroke, the cane actually came out better than one he previously made for a granddaughter, he said, because he learned from his mistakes.

The first cane, roughly four feet long and made of ash, features images of owls, a skull and a snake. Dick made it because his granddaughter and he enjoyed reading the Harry Potter books together.

When Dick was a high school student in California, he became fascinated with the inlay work a father’s friend was doing.

“It was so unique and so inspiring that I wanted to do it myself,” Dick said.

He carved while serving in the Navy and began doing inlay work when he moved to Pelham about 35 years ago.

“Remembering some of the things he taught me, he showed me, I started doing my own inlay,” said Dick, who created a recreational bar for his downstairs family room that features boards for cribbage, chess board and backgammon.

Dick used to do pre-press work for a business forms company before he retired. That experience has helped his craft.

“A lot of that I incorporate in what I do … A lot of the tricks that I picked up (there), I find useful in some of the stuff that I do here,” he said.

Dick doesn’t sell his work or exhibit his pieces, but after he gave a chess set that he made to his older brother, a friend of his brother arranged to have it displayed for a few years in an Iowa museum.