Floyd Kile, 84, lives  in Columbia Falls with his dachshund pal Freckles,  surrounded by his legacy of a lifetime of working with wood.

From beautiful bowls to grandfather clocks, Kile crafted items for practicality as well as beauty. He points out a black walnut cabinet and two grandfather clocks upstairs.

Another clock decorates the corner of his living room, and yet another ornately inlaid grandfather clock keeps time in his downstairs office.

“I sold quite a few of them,” Kile said. “I’d take them down and set them up at Glacier Bank. They would sell in two or three days .”

Kile said he taught himself how to work with wood after moving to the Flathead Valley in 1954. He started out of necessity.

“The first thing I made was a highchair for one of my kids,” he said.

By reading as much as he could, he honed his techniques and tackled complicated projects.

“I liked the old stuff — colonial type,” he said. “That’s why I got started on these clocks. ”

Kile’s hobby got a boost when he learned of another woodworker with oak, black walnut and cherry to sell.

“I bought everything he had for practically nothing,” he recalled. “Black walnut is my favorite wood. It has real nice texture. Oak is the hardest.”

 Over the years, he expanded his  tools from a router and a few bits to many bits, a planer, large sander, saws and a lathe, along with a professional dust collector and dozens of clamps. When he retired from the aluminum plant, he had more time to use the tools in his neatly organized shop.

Kile made several tables, including the one still in his dining area with built-in drawers.

“Remember the old tables with drawers where you could put the silverware?” he asked. “If you bought a real nice dining room set, that’s what the table consisted of; it had drawers where you could put napkins and silverware and stuff like that.”

He estimates that he made 25 to 30 grandfather clocks. For design ideas for his clocks, Kile collected pictures of clocks in magazines.

“None of my clocks were ever the same, because there were no plans for them,” he said.

Opening up a glass cabinet, Kile shows delicate inlaid wood bowls. From another, he pulls out music boxes.

Claw feet on a coffee table and graceful curving legs of other tables hearken back to the day when furniture pieces were treasures passed down through the generations. Kile said that’s why he has kept so many clocks.  

“I kept them for my kids,” he said. “Everything you see around here belongs to my kids.”

Because of numbness in his hands, Kile had to give up power tools and most of his woodworking. He now makes a limited number of small items.

“I made a few canes,” Kile said. “They come in pretty handy for me now, and I use them quite a bit.”

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.