Bill Majewski sat in the garage workshop of his home in Duluth's Smithville neighborhood and fired up a small rotary tool sounding so much like a dental drill that it produced involuntary cringes among guests.
But instead of fillings and caps, Majewski's work is turning wood into copycats of nature. He calls himself a carver but he's also a sculptor, a grinder, a sander, burner and a painter. He turns pieces of butternut, basswood, cottonwood, tupelo and other woods into wildly realistic replicas.
After more than 35 years of wood carving, he's advanced to almost all power tools now, and his work is more detailed, more lifelike than ever before.
"I probably won't touch a knife to this at all," Majewski said, holding up a partially carved scarlet tanager between passes with the rotary tool, similar to a Dremel, that he was using to line feathers on the bird's back. "It's 50,000 rpms."
Majewski showed visitors a chickadee he carved in the in the early 1980s, after he had taken his first ever carving class through the Morgan Park Community Schools program.
"At the time it was the best chickadee I could do," he said. "But now, I think the ones I'm doing are much better ... . The methods, the tools, have gotten much better."
