Technician to Wood Turner, Tyndale Finds His Calling

Cobb County native Bill Tyndale is a digital technician turned wood turner since his retirement with AT&T, formerly Bell South, nearly two years ago. Tyndale enjoys his days returning to the initial love of his life—wood working.

Like most kids during the 1950s, Tyndale enjoyed playing outdoors with his pals and using their imaginations to occupy their time. He says in a sense his wood working days began early, as he and his friends built a number of basic tree houses in their youth. However, they were lucky if the structures stayed up.

Though his father was an architect, Tyndale says there wasn’t much by way of the arts that influenced him as a child. It wasn’t until his freshman year at North Fulton High through a shop class that he learned of wood working.

Tyndale says he was hooked from his first experience with wood; he always felt there was an element of "magic" in the trees.

“The magic [in the trees] is the trees go back, some as much as 150 years. To me they have a story told in the grain of the wood; each piece has its own unique story to be told,” Tyndale explains.

Tyndale was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1969. Upon returning a couple of years later, he went to work with Bell South for a stretch of 32 years, until he retired in 2009. He admits, he saw more changes than most during his time there.

“I was there before they invented touch tone phones,” he laughs at his tenure with the company. “Companies aren’t designed to be like that anymore.”

When deciding what to do with his retirement, Tyndale says he was concerned about finding something suitable to not only occupy his time but to also allow him to still have purpose.

After attending some local craft and art shows, Tyndale had nearly decided on purchasing a wood lathe, a machine used to shape raw wood. However, his wife Cheryl surprised him for his birthday last October with a lathe of his own.

Tyndale immediately went to work picking up where he left off many years ago, from that old shop class at North Fulton High. He worked feverishly making up for lost time, giving his creations away to family and friends. They eventually sat him down to explain he could actually sell his wares.

So, taking the advice of his son David, his daughter Leigh, his sister Nancy and his wife, Tyndale set out to prove to himself that he could be successful at selling his product on the retail market. His first event was the Big Shanty Festival, an arts and crafts show in Kennesaw. He fared well at the event, leading him to try his hand at other local festivals.

Today, Tyndale is a regular on the arts and craft show scene having gleaned tidbits of information on how to be successful at his craft from studying the festivals as well as correspondence with his mentors David Ellsworth, Bill Luce and Mark Sillay.

“What I found out is people are still buying but mainly as gifts,” Tyndale explains.

After a chance meeting with fellow wood turner Wayne Reeves, Tyndale was introduced to Shae Avery, owner of Avery Gallery. Avery liked Tyndale’s work so much he opted to display over a dozen pieces, which are still on display, in his gallery. Several pieces have sold to date.

“You want to find that one thing you really enjoy [after retirement] and it seems like I found it in this,” Tyndale says with pride.

You can meet Bill Tyndale at the from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., Friday, Sept. 2 or for more information contact him at: billt@bellsouth.net, www.woodshapes.net.