By Matt Skoufalos
Throughout his childhood, Paul Benjamin spent many hours at his uncle’s house while his mother worked. Together, they would work, side by side, tinkering at the bench, building toys, dollhouses and various projects. Benjamin credits his uncle with fostering his sense of curiosity and an interest in working with his hands, which led to a lifelong love of woodworking, a career as an Air Force mechanic, and provided the skill set that underpins his work in the radiology space as well.
“I’ve always liked to tinker with my hands,” Benjamin said. “I started making stuff, and it just stuck.”
The first project he ever made, an end table, took a long time to complete, “and it was really, really basic,” Benjamin said. Nevertheless, he was so proud of his efforts that the table was a mainstay of the household, used forever “just out of pure stubbornness.” (It still lives in his attic, Benjamin said, because he still can’t bear to part with it.)
In the years since that first table, Benjamin has honed his skills many times over in a woodshop where his proficiency – and tool collection – accumulated over time. The garage workshop that he built when first married to his wife, Suzy, grew into the basement workshop that he enjoys today with the addition of dust collection systems. To the table saw, sanders and router with which he began his work, Benjamin added more at a rate of about one new tool per job, he said.
“Starting out, I was an x-ray tech,” he said. “I saved up for a planer; probably got that five years into it. That does help quite a bit when you’re trying to build furniture.”
Choosing which projects to pursue typically involves sorting through friends’ requests.
“Someone will say, ‘Hey, can you make me this?’ ” Benjamin said. “I like figuring things out. I’ll have somebody send me a picture of what they want, and then I’ll figure out how to make something from nothing.”
When he’s building for himself, however, Benjamin’s focus is always on craftsman-style furniture. Hallmarks of the craftsman style in furniture are an emphasis on high-quality, functional work. Pieces typically feature precision joinery, carefully defined details, and the use of durable, upscale woods, like mahogany and cherry, Benjamin’s favorite wood to work.
“I like the way it smells,” he said; “I like the grain to it. It’s a hard wood, but it’s not so hard that it’s terrible to work with.”
From a woodworking perspective, “the old saying, ‘measure twice, cut once,’ ” is top of mind when employing the craftsman style, Benjamin said.
“You have to be very, very precise in setup, so when you start doing the cuts, you don’t waste a bunch of wood, especially with some of the nicer pieces,” he said. “It looks really nice, but it’s simple. It shows off the craftsmanship.”
Benjamin’s portfolio of finished projects includes patio sets, kitchen and living room tables, and built-in cabinets surrounding the fireplace in his own home. Most of his pieces feature finished edges, but he has made a live-edge, Maple slab desk for his son. Benjamin sources much of his wood from Amish lumberyards in the Northern Ohio region that he calls home, but he’s also completed projects with reclaimed barn wood that’s more than a century-and-a-half old. They are “solid Maple, super-thick beams,” Benjamin said.
Not every project ends well: for as sharp of a table as he can fabricate, don’t ask Benjamin to make you chairs. “I’m just not good at it,” he said.
Comfortable with his limitations, however, Benjamin said the biggest benefit to his “sawdust therapy” is the release it affords him after long days as the operations manager for radiology and pain management at the Ahuja and Beachwood Medical Centers in Beachwood, Ohio.
During his day-to-day, Benjamin oversees the radiology and pain management departments at Ahuja and Beachwood as well as four satellite imaging centers. The network is also in the end stages of constructing a second, outpatient hospital within the next three weeks, and Benjamin has roles to play in the planning and execution of the project.
“If I have a rough day at work, sometimes just going down and starting to tinker on stuff, just putzing around, is my release,” Benjamin said. “Lately with the project here at work, it’s not as often as I would like.”
Benjamin does appreciate the practical application of his woodworking skill set in the radiology world. The methodology of his approach to problem-solving and critical thinking in both environments complements the work he does in each.
“Woodworking gets you to think of things in a chronological, step-by-step order,” Benjamin said. “That translates very well with radiology capital projects, and even day-to-day operations. It just makes you think things through and create the steps. That’s the one thing that it has taught me that I’ve used for work.”
Once the capital project is completed, Benjamin believes he’ll have more time to dedicate to woodworking projects at home. His sons are both enrolled in college, at Mount Union and Ohio University, respectively; and while they may not necessarily take up woodworking the way he has, the family does enjoy outdoor activities together, from kayaking to taking in the sunshine.
