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Jim Heimbach is a woodworker dedicated to excellence and the highest levels of craftsmanship. He is fascinated by wood and trees and particularly enjoys working with wood that has a story. He likes being able to take the process of building a chair all the way from the tree to a completed piece. He wants to know where every piece of wood comes from and its story. For this reason he tries to limit his wood sources to urban lumber where he often knows where the tree came from and why it became available to use.

Jim particularly enjoys building chairs and is currently specializing in rocking chairs. He sees people as having a special relationship with chairs. Of all the kinds of furniture he could choose to build it is chairs in which people rest, envelop themselves, and spend time. People touch chairs, caress them, feel them. Chairs also involve a degree of shaping and three dimensionality not present in other furniture, especially in the seat, headrest, and arms. This requires the ability to ‘read’ the grain not just on the surface, but also how it will change as the surface is penetrated by shaping. Then, in rocking chairs, you have the dynamic feature of rocking. This aspect of movement sets them apart from any other kind of chair. This is what makes chairs unique among the different kinds of furniture and why Jim has chosen to begin building rocking chairs.

Jim has received training in hand tool woodworking from some of the finest furniture craftsmen in Texas at the Homestead Heritage School of Woodworking in Elm Mott, TX, north of Waco. Under the superb teaching of Frank Strazza and Paul Sellers Jim found himself fascinated with the craft of woodworking and thoroughly enjoying the experience of building his first furniture pieces. This past year Jim was laid off from his software engineering job at Sprint. He has chosen to regard what most would think as a setback and treat it instead as an opportunity to begin woodworking full time. Today Jim is working out of his small one-man shop in Lake County, CA and doesn't mind at all the three-step commute to his shop.

Sam Maloof said in the epilogue of his book, 'Sam Maloof, Woodworker,' "Too often we who make objects -- and I speak of all media -- become quite taken with what we have done. We accept all credit, all praise. We become smug and conceited. I believe no man has ever designed anything that approaches the complexity of the simplest flower or the grandeur of a great redwood tree. God is the Creator of all things, and the beauty He has given us is awesome." Jim agrees, "The wood is what is truly beautiful. My work in making a rocking chair pales in insignificance compared to what God has already created in the wood."

Gender: Male