MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. -- The Wood Hobby Shop here offers service members and family a healthy and creative hobby aboard the base.
The shop is classified as a cabinet shop, but according to Jack W. Neuber, the manager at the Wood Hobby Shop, that means you can build just about anything.
The shop also offers all the domestic hard woods on the market at very low prices, according to Neuber.
To use the shop, a person is required to take a safety course that lasts about one hour and explains all the safety procedures to using all the power tools in the shop safely and effectively, according to Neuber.
Patrons can pay by the day, month, or year to use the shop, according to Neuber.
A relatively new feature, the shop offers a space to build speaker boxes for car stereos, according to Neuber. It also sells the medium density fiber material used to make quality speaker boxes at nearly half the cost it would be to buy one commercially.
The shop offers any tool, service or help that a person needs to get any job done, from fixing a bed frame to building an entertainment center, according to Neuber.
The shop has a large array of patterns and plans but they are not always required for building what a person wants, added Neuber.
“If you come in with a picture, we can help you develop templates and plans for it so you can build it,” said Neuber.
Anything a person can think of can be made at the shop from very large items to very small items, according to Neuber.
“We had someone who built a little boat, and we had a guy who would come in and make guitars,” he said.
Building wooden furniture by hand ensures that it is well made and its quality can endure the test of time, Neuber pointed out.
“I like to build my own stuff because then I know the amount of quality that has gone into an item,” said Staff Sgt. James Allen, a combat instructor with the School of Infantry (East).
Neuber, has been there for approximately six years, but the shop has about 100 years of combined experience in wood working among its staff and can give a person any number of ideas of what they can build.
“There are 1,000 different ways to build a box and 1,000 different boxes you can make. We can help you with all of them,” said Neuber.