The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Carving out a new career
Chris Pascoe, who worked many years as a stone mason, now creates works of beauty with a chainsaw
After spending 35 years working on residential and commercial buildings as a stone mason, Chris Pascoe has found a different way to create works of beauty.
But in his new full-time career, he’s cast aside the stones and turned his attention to wood.
Pascoe uses a chainsaw to carve wooden logs into figures that include bears, eagles and owls, which he produces for the business he calls Carvings by Chris.
While Pascoe initially began carving with a chainsaw in the garage of his Madison Township home, he expanded about a month ago by renting a barn in Perry Township. Located at 3331 North Ridge Road, the site serves as a workshop where customers also can visit and check out Pascoe’s completed products and projects in progress.
He opened the workshop about a month ago and the number of customers stopping by has been steadily increasing. One man who visited commissioned Pascoe to carve an 8-foot-tall Sasquatch.
“It’s the biggest piece I’ve taken on to date,” Pascoe said.
Career path
Pascoe has been carving out a niche as a chainsaw artist for about six years, which he probably didn’t envision after a work history weighted heavily in stone fabrication.
Born in Gloucester, England, he came to America in 1991 to work at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, an Episcopal church in New York City. He was involved in a program at the church that taught inner-city youths to cut and carve stone.
After 4 ½ to 5 years, his contract ended, and personal circumstances brought him to Ashtabula County. His first home was in Harpersfield Township.
“When I moved to Ashtabula, I wasn’t prepared for 17 feet of snow,” he said with a chuckle.
He initially worked as a landscaper in Northeast Ohio, but later held several positions with stone fabrication companies. Pascoe got his introduction to chainsaw carving about six years ago when he and his girlfriend, Sandy Munley, attended the Green Industry and Equipment Expo — also known as the GIE + EXPO — in Louisville, Kentucky. Munley’s interest in the expo stems from her role as executive director of the Ohio Landscape Association in Broadview Heights.
As Pascoe walked around the trade show with Munley, he met Sam Dunning, a chainsaw artist known as “The Kentucky Carver.”
“Every year he’d been doing carvings and demonstrating a battery-operated chainsaw,” Pascoe said. “Over six years, I would stop by and chat with Sam. Sam knew my background in the stone industry. He said, ‘Chris, why don’t you try chainsaw carving?’ “
“And I said, “Come on Sam, is there any money in it? Can you make a living at it?”
Dunning said he had been carving for 15 years and earning good money, and convinced Pascoe he could do the same.
So about five years ago, Pascoe started to “dabble” with chainsaw carving.
“I made a couple of eagles. I gave the first one to Sandy,” he said.
“The second one looked like a phoenix that had come out of the fire, and that’s where I wanted to throw it. But Sandy said, ‘No don’t you dare, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’ “
Sales success
By the time Pascoe had carved four or five eagles, he decided to find a way to sell them. So he asked the manager at Tractor Supply Co. on North Ridge Road in Madison Township.
Although TSC didn’t want to add his carvings to their inventory, he was invited to set up a tent in the store parking lot to carve, entertain shoppers and drum up business on his own.
When Pascoe arrived for his first appearance at TSC on Dec. 2, 2017, he brought along some completed eagles for display as well as another one to carve on site. He was pleased with the customers’ response.
“I sold four eagles that day,” he said.
After leaving TSC, he and Munley went to a restaurant in Geneva. Pascoe had left a couple of eagles in the back of his pickup truck, and when he and Sandy came back out after their meal, there was a note on his vehicle’s windshield.
“It said, ‘What’s the deal with the eagles?’ Pascoe recalled. The note-writer also said he wanted to talk with the carver about his creations.
“He wrote, ‘I’m in the restaurant wearing a Shell Oil cap. Well, everybody wears a cap in Ashtabula,” Pascoe said.
Pascoe and Munley went back into the restaurant and eventually located the interested customer. He ended up paying cash for one of Pascoe’s eagles.
“So I said, ‘OK, this could be viable,’ “Pascoe recalled reflecting on his day of sales success.
Pascoe followed up by exhibiting his works at the 2018 Great Big Home + Garden, held in February at the I-X Center in Cleveland.
“I did very well there,” Pascoe said. “I sold everything I took down and nearly everything I carved when I was there.”
Along with enjoying greater success as a chainsaw carver, Pascoe at the time was working full-time running a stone fabricating company in Garfield Heights. But his busy schedule got quite a bit lighter in July 2018 when his financial backers in the stone business decided to shut it down.
“So at that point I was like, ‘What do I do now?’ “Pascoe said.
Pascoe decided to focus on creating new carvings for the 2019 Great Big Home + Garden Show. He ended up selling just as many carvings at this year’s event as he did at the one in 2018.
The next move
While Pascoe was driving back to Madison Township from that show, he realized that he needed a bigger workshop to accommodate his growing business.
After failing to spot any obvious workshop locations along Route 20 in eastern Lake County, Pascoe began calling friends and business associates for possible leads.
He eventually was connected with a woman who owned a barn on North Ridge Road in Perry Township that once housed a small antique business. While the barn took a while to convert into a workshop, Pascoe is pleased with his new location.
Most of Pascoe’s animal carvings are about 4 feet tall.
“If you start going smaller, the tip of the chainsaw only goes down so small,” he said. “Then you need to change the tools you have to use and it gets a lot more labor intensive.”
Besides his chainsaw, Pascoe only uses a few other devices — such as die grinders or handheld rotary tools for detailing — to create his carvings. On average, he said his carvings take about two days to complete.
White pine is Pascoe’s favorite wood to use for his carved figures, many of which cost in the range of $350 to $550.
In addition to operating his new workshop, Pascoe said he still plans to sell his carvings at events such as the Great Big Home + Garden Show, the Cuyahoga County Fair, and Tractor Supply Co. Market Days.
Although Pascoe said he still will take on occasional stone masonry projects, he believes he’s made a rocksolid choice by settling on chainsaw carving as his main business.
“This is the direction I’m going now,” he said. “And every day is a fun day.”