The inside of Wayne LeBlanc’s woodwork shop, situated in the country just outside of his New Iberia home, is what you might expect: racks with stacks of wood, tools strewn on a table, a planer and table saw, remnants of saw dust. “Paw’s Shop” is a place where he has experimented – and failed – and where he can feel creative and proud of his woodwork. It is a distraction that came at just the right time in his life.

As he begins talking about his work, LeBlanc makes his way around tables, lifting towels and cloths, one by one, uncovering two of his latest end tables…a truly unique live-edge sofa table…and one of his charcuterie boards, that proved to be a popular gift item last Christmas.

It’s a hobby that went from 0 to 50 after a diagnosis of an advanced stage of thyroid cancer a couple years ago left him unable to return to work and, consequently, with much time on his hands. “My brother-in-law introduced me to someone in Bayou Pigeon who sold sinker cypress boards. Right away, I fell in love with the wood and bought a few pieces not knowing what I would do with them. So, I went on YouTube for furniture ideas and made an end table that my wife fell in love with. I built five more pieces for our house.”

For LeBlanc, woodworking has provided more than a hobby. The beauty of the wood ignited a spark inside him, inspired him to create something, to feel productive in spite of his illness.

A year and a half into it, he is still making trips to the same supplier for sinker cypress, and has expanded his collection to include dining room tables, small book shelves, frames, bread baskets and trays.

“Look how pretty it is,” he says running his hand against the planed planks pointing out shades of grey, brown and orange. He brings over a charcuterie board, with simple bronze handles, made of sinker cypress from seven different trees. “That’s why I used sinker cypress – because of the beauty of this wood.”

The history of the logs is the other attraction for LeBlanc. “Many of the trees were 500 to 600 years old,” he says. “They were cut for building material from the late 1800s to 1930s and drifted from the old lumber camps in the Atchafalaya Basin and sank. They’re pulled up from the silts of the Basin waters and are dried for a year by the time I hand pick them.”

Once in trying to figure the age of a particularly large piece of cypress earmarked for a dining room table, LeBlanc attempted to count its rings. “I stopped at 270 and that was only part of the tree,” he says.

After a long career of sugar cane farming, constructing steel buildings and loading bulk trucks at the salt mines of Avery Island, he likes the peace and quiet of working alone in his shop. His day begins around 8:00, cutting the boards and running them through the planer (his favorite tool), gluing, sanding – lots of sanding – and doing finishing work. He gets lost in it, turning the radio to rock ‘n’ roll from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. Having learned how much work his health will allow, he takes a break every hour.

Like most woodworkers, LeBlanc is easy going, admittedly a perfectionist, and a keeper of the wood’s integrity. “A customer once asked me to paint over the cypress,” he says, still in disbelief “and I wouldn’t do it to mess up the natural color of the wood.” Still relatively new to his craft, he understands it like a veteran explaining, “The wood tells me which way to turn it to match up the grains and the colors.

Although one of his grandfathers and two uncles were carpenters, Leblanc says he didn’t have an interest in woodworking – or the time – until now. “I took a woodshop class in high school and didn’t particularly like it.” That brings him to call attention to one of his class projects, found while rummaging through some old things, that now hangs near the shop’s door. The carving of a thin-shaped dolphin mounted on an oval piece of wood serves as a reminder of how far he has come in his skills. “Now, I think of my woodwork as art, to be remembered by and passed down; and I’m proud to look at something beautiful that I’ve created.”

Wayne LeBlanc’s furniture can be seen at Bird on the Bayou in New Iberia and at Lafayette Farmers and Artisans Market.