RATHDRUM - Off a dusty driveway flanked by brush and winding from the rural east Ohio Match Road sits an old lumber mill barn.

Behind that sits a shed, hidden by the barn and an abutting, marshy pond on the other side.

The shed looks clean. Its boards are new and its face is decorated with saw blades, cut in half and manicured to look like artistic snapshots of a rising sun.

Open the door to the shed that's shadowed by barn and pond and from the corner two beady green eyes glare at you.

"That's Saw Man," says Saw Man's creator, Dennis Bennett, who also crafted the saw blade suns on the shed's front door. "He's really got a lot of salvaged parts."

Saw Man's red pecs flare, as do his shoulders. His hands are chains. His brain? That alone is nearly 100 different parts, wired, welded and pieced together beneath a top hat, beaded with red bulbs.

"Well, I've amused myself," Bennett said, surveying his property where he has used his welding and electrician skills to build countless statues of art like the 7-foot-tall Saw Man from abandoned saw blades and any other scrap or trinket of metal he can find. "I really get a chuckle out of turning something into something else."

It's not just inside the shed where Bennett's metal world - called Cedar Mill Studio - is on display. It's his entire property.

That old lumber mill barn hiding the shed is a 1,200-square-foot warehouse of saw blades, and art. Metal chains with colored blades hang down like a hippie's beaded curtains. A stink bug, whose face is a refurbished gas mask and whose antenna are windshield wipers, has a motion detector that perfumes the air when tripped.

"Suggestive," Bennett says on a tour of the property, referring to how he aims to appropriately match the smaller pieces that go into a bigger one - like a gas mask going into the stink bug. Or windshield wipers. Those wipe away smashed bugs on road trips.

"Some pieces just jump out at me," he says.

Along a shelf in the shop is a stack of pieces waiting for a purpose.

Bennett hits about 100 yard sales in a year. Yard sales, he says, he can't resist. And friends, who know the retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel's passion, drop off trinkets they think might come in handy.

"These have to be something," he says, grabbing from the pile of waiting parts two old, rusted oil cans that look like mini bombs a little plane would drop. "Maybe a small creature, maybe a small arm, maybe a neck."

Outside the shop, tucked behind Bennett's house, other creatures wait.

Yoga Boy is an upside-down refrigerant tank; his crossed legs are baseball bats. The gecko's feet are bike pedals, its eyes are orange. He's stuck to the wall looking down at you. Ever see a butterfly whose wings are satellites? Saw Man, by the way, took nine months to build. And Babe, the 310-pound blue ox, is two old cement mixers and a stabilizer out of an old Chevy Blazer. She's Bennett's favorite for now, because she's the newest and because she's a girl.

"So she's got that going for her," he said.

Bennett retired to North Idaho in 1996 from Virginia after a career in the Army and as a defense contractor. The draw of the area, he said, was the quality of life. And the property he found at 773 E. Ohio Match Road was a perfect fit, as it was the Lance Starkey Mill in the 1970s. The shop in the back where his metal world sits now made a perfect home for his hobby. The abandoned mill meant the property was littered with blades and metal, too, but it was the barn he wanted most.

"I didn't even really care about the house," he said, adding that it took two semi trailers to haul his tools and pieces across the country.

The common theme of his pieces is the saw blade. Look, and you'll find it. You have to look hard sometimes, but the teeth of the shark are sure pointy like a blade.

He loves working on metal, he says, feeling both at ease and fully concentrated when he does. The world he has created, he wants to share, too.

Bennett is offering tours of his metal haven to anyone interested in seeing scrap metal turned art. He has never really sold pieces, so he has never priced them, but he's not opposed to the idea. He would prefer to get his collection together for a museum display somewhere. Tours would be Tuesdays and Thursdays between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and Saturdays by appointment.

When dark descends, the pieces come to life as bulbs glow in the dark - the handiwork of his electrician skills.

"It looks like a carnival here at night," he said.

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