Craftsman’s creations built to last
PIERSON STATION, Ill. — Arnold Jones has been on the bench for 50 years.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the self-taught craftsman who lives in the tiny town of Pierson Station, midway between Hammond and Atwood, is rock-solid sure he’s got it just right by now.
You can judge for yourself when you head out to his one-acre backyard and walk into a workshop big enough to house a locomotive. That’s where Jones displays the workbenches he hand-builds for those who take their work seriously.
Customers can take one of the benches home for prices starting at $450. Just bring a truck or trailer with heavy-duty axles to put it in. Oh, and you’ll need help carrying it: Four guys who look like they were built by the same firm that did Stonehenge and can bench press maybe 400 pounds should do the trick.
“It’s heavy; I’ve no idea what it weighs,” said Jones, as he and a visitor look over an 8-foot-long model, executed mainly in oak, with some pine accents. It stands 32 inches tall and 28 inches wide, with a top made of varnished oak strips thick enough to give a grand ballroom a floor that would last forever.
“My brother’s got one, and when he had to move from Colorado to the state of Washington, he had this moving van come,” recalls Jones 71. “The guys in the moving van who had to pick it up just said ‘My God .’ “
Each bench follows a pattern Jones laid down when he built the first one for himself half a century ago. There have been a few design tweaks along the way, and he’s willing to customize here and there, but otherwise, he sticks with what works. The hardwoods used for the benches were bought from an old house demolition, and Jones must have invested in a whole lot of the prime lumber: He’s just finished bench No. 54, and each one has plenty of wood beams up to 2 inches thick in its construction.
Everything is screwed, glued and bolted together with smoothly sliding drawers — a bench typically has eight, plus a big central cupboard — that pull out to a length of 27 inches. The construction is massive, solid and indestructible. If your house gets wiped out by a tornado, the rescuers may never find you or the living room, but there, in the middle of the splintered remains of your life, will be that Arnold Jones bench.
“He takes the view that, well, if it’s not going to last, why do it?” said his wife, Marjorie, 72, whose work desk is a solid walnut model her husband built in shop class when he was a junior in high school. “Word has spread by word of mouth about what he can do,” she adds.
Jones got the idea there might be a market for his workbenches after visitors saw the one he had built for himself in 1960 and made lots of appreciative noises. He’s been selling them slowly ever since, never advertising but always happy to bend his heart and mind to the task for those who have heard of his fame and are willing to make the pilgrimage to Pierson Station in search of the ultimate.
“The biggest one I ever made was 16-foot-long for a guy I used to work with at Mueller’s in Decatur,” said Jones, who retired from his 44-year career as an assembler there 11 years ago. “He’s still using it, and I’ve never had a bench come back to me yet with a problem.”
Now he’s introduced son of a workbench, a stout, general-purpose low table that’s 18 inches tall and 30 inches long, shares its daddy’s physique and could safely hold the weight of your car — or maybe a small aircraft.
“I started making and selling them last winter, and I made 16 of them, and I’ve got six left,” he adds.
A diabetic, he said a robust work rate is good for his health and helps him control his blood sugar.
“I’m not making much an hour, but I like to work, and I am enjoying retirement; it just goes by so fast,” he adds, and lays a tender hand on one of the big workbenches, destined to outlive us all.