Education based on wood leads to small business

Moses Lake – A beautiful cutting board can be a beautiful thing.

But that’s no reason to be complacent about the cutting boards made by Samantha and her husband, AJ Simmons, and sold at their store, A Plus Woodshop, located at 205 S. Division St., in conjunction with the Downtown Moses Lake Association’s Obra Project business incubator.

“It’s hardwood,” said Samantha Symonds. It dulls the knife edge before scoring the wood.

The cutting board Simmons carries comes in a rainbow of colors — brown, brown, magenta, orange — all from the most unique hardwoods the two have learned to work with over the past several years.

“My favorite is the blue mahogany, the national tree of Jamaica. It just grows there, and it grows so fast, they use it for reforestation,” she said. “It has unique shades of blue in it, and it has blue, green, and gray. And so it makes a great pattern to use in some designs.

This includes using blue mahogany as an accent piece in the boards she holds.

“It is the only natural blue wood without taking minerals or pigments. It gives him a little more,” she said. “That’s why it’s a rare wood.”

Simmonds said she learned about wood over the past few years just by working with wood and making things. She said her husband started the business before the Covid-19 pandemic, looking for something to do at home to take care of her and their children while dealing with chronic inflammation of the large intestine caused by Crohn’s disease. It causes pain and leads to infection.

As she recovered, Simmons said she started helping her husband with simple things at first. Finally, he asked her to burn someone’s name on the frame.

“I did, and I realized I really liked it. So I started making art,” she says.

The shop space at Obra Project is filled with things she and her husband have made — bookmarks, key chains, intricately carved earrings, puzzles, plant markers, a few cutting boards and other items from their extensive home woodshop. In the past two years, Siemens has expanded its product line as they purchased new equipment, including computer-controlled cutters and laser cutters.

Simmons even has a laser engraving of a moose on a moose antler paddle.

“We were both very particular about what we liked,” Simmonds said. “We always want to do new things. … I run the laser, he does the CNC. I do the wood burning, he does the woodworking.”

Until they opened the store, however, they both did retail, taking their merchandise on the road to shows every weekend, Simmons said.

“This year we have space so we’re bringing it back,” she said. “The first year, we had shows every weekend in Washington and Oregon. Last year we turned up the volume and only did shows in our two hour period. So, Spokane, Tri-Cities, Coulee City, places like that. But we did it every weekend until the weekend before Christmas.

While Simmons says her laser-engraved earrings are her best-selling items, A Plus also does a pretty brisk business in rubber band guns. Based on a design her husband used to play with as a child, Simmons raised the price of the gun to keep kids entertained for a year at the Prosser Balloon Rally.

“Elastic band guns sell, sell, both years. I mean, we had to go home with 75 plastic guns and do a lot of work and bring them back the next day,” she said. “Once[most kids]see hot air balloons take off, it’s just for them, it’s not fun anymore. And it takes forever to fill the bladder, so they sit around bored.”

Woodworking has become a full-time endeavor for the entire family, Simmons said. They are teaching their teenage son to make the tools, while their five-year-old daughter is testing all the toys to make sure they are strong and learning to distinguish wood from the rest.

“She knows more about rare woods than most adults,” Simmonds said.

Although she works on the retail end, Simmons says she still loves wood burning and making earrings using lasers.

“My wood burning is kind of zen for me. I like to pop in an audio book and now I’m going to go on it. And I sit there all day and burn wood and it feels good to do it,” she said. “And it’s something I can do even when I’m sick, which makes it even better.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.