50 years of making sawdust

Bolstad Boxes Limited is a partnership of Bill and Nan Bolstad. From the outside, it appears that we work together, but in reality, we have each carved out our portion of the business and pretty much stay in our comfort zone. Like Bill does not like his work being interrupted by the phone, so we have no phone in the workshop; Nan takes on the phone calls in her office.

Bill Bolstad started out his career as a woodworker when he was very young. I have a woodcarving of a donkey that he made for his grandmother when he was 7 years old. Bill grew up in rural NW Montana, just a mile down the road from his grandparents homestead. This summer Bill will officially celebrate his 62nd birthday. And we have two important anniversaries this year also. 1) Our 40th wedding anniversary, and 2) Bill's 50th anniversary as a professional woodworker.

During the past 50 years, Bill has built over 90,000 boxes. He has made thousands of tables, hundreds of wooden toys, many wood carvings. And the ideas he has had -- too numerous to recount! The biggie question here--we may never know the answer-- is "How much sawdust has he made?" When our girls were small, their first writings were probably scribblings in sawdust on the J-machine (a planner with a big J--kids called in The J Machine). Bill used to turn on the dust collection system first thing everyday; and inevidably scare our cat Daisy out of her slumber atop the folded bags of the collector. He would collect the saw dust and use it as mulch in our garden, around trees, under our roses. Neighbors would come get sawdust to mulch their yards. I used some sawdust in my "paper making days". I have a photo of Bill-s legs and feet dangling in midair as he cleaned out the dust collector. And yes, I can still recall the day he rushed into the house, grabbed the phone, and reported to the 911 operator that his dust collector was on fire.

Sawdust has been an important part of our life. It follows Bill everywhere. When I dust, I wipe up sawdust. At one time Bill wrote on a card attached to our bulletin board, "Sweep and you shall find". Important messagesw were written in the dust.

So for the next year we are going to celebrate Bill's 50th anniversary of making sawdust. It's going to take alot of sweeping!