Back in 1997, when Leldon Maxcy picked up his first scroll saw at the local Big Lots store, he didn’t know he was embarking on a hobby that would one day provide his livelihood.

In fact, he didn’t even know there was an artist – or a craftsman – living inside him.

“I’d never done anything like that before, not really,” he says, surrounded in his shop by stacks of carefully-curated materials and high-end specialty saws. “But the saw was cheap, and it was something I could afford, so I just bought it and went from there.”

He was still in grade school then. Now 33, Maxcy, who works from his basement wood studio just north of Cullman and a little ways south of Eva, is a full-time craftsman. He’s become a niche star among lovers of scroll work nationwide, with handcrafted items that routinely are featured in Scroll Saw Woodworking and Creative Woodworks & Crafts magazines, and across Internet enthusiast websites and forums.

“I’ve just now gotten to the point where I was able to quit my job and go to this full time,” he says. “That’s a good feeling. Even when I was at work at my job, I would have all this downtime and I’d find myself on YouTube, looking up all these scroll sawing videos and just trying to learn even when I was away from home. Now, that’s pretty much what I get to do.”

A Vinemont High School graduate, Maxcy’s a local product who crafts a ton of locally and regionally-themed pieces for both individual and corporate clients. Scrollwork that celebrates the South – and Alabama in particular – is a big part of his business.

Maxcy recently partnered with Southern Accents architectural antiques in Cullman to create a massive, 12-foot reclaimed wood cutout of Alabama, with each of the state’s 67 counties cut and stained separately. It traveled to Montgomery for the annual Southern Makers design festival, and served as the backdrop to the show’s main stage. That piece now hangs from the rafters in the taproom at Birmingham’s Good People Brewing Company.

Some of Maxcy’s items – like smaller versions of the Alabama county map – are so popular that he’s asked to duplicate them again and again and again. But he’s never entertained the idea of automating his popular work.

“Even when you’re making the same thing over and over, it’s different every time,” he explains. “And that’s a part of it: finding a good piece of wood and kind of putting in the time to shape it by hand. There are some ornamental things where it might make sense to use what’s already out there, but I’d never really want to have a computer or a piece of software just go through the motions of making all the things I make.”

That do-it-yourself craftsman’s ethic lies at the heart of Maxcy’s ambitions. Asked where he’d like to be if there were no limits to his time and budget, his ideal future simply sounds like a refined version of his current setup.

“It would be great to have a place somewhere in downtown Cullman, where you could have a store out front and then have the shop in the back,” he says.

“But that’s pretty much it. I like what I’m doing. And I’m really happy that I can do it for a living.”

Benjamin Bullard can be reached by phone at 256-734-2131 ext. 145.