I recently decided to expand my woodworking skill set by making a board.

It turns out that this is much more difficult than it sounds. Yes, I could have simply gone to a lumberyard and purchased some wood. Or I could have wandered into a home improvement megastore where I likely would have gotten lost and forced live off the land by swilling sports drinks and chewing on leather tool belts. But buying a board would have been the easy, wimpy way of doing things.

This might be due to my Norwegian heritage, but I believe that anything worth doing is worth doing the hard way. That’s why my board-making project started out with a slab of wood cut from a tree. But it wasn’t my own personal tree slab.

Our neighbor Larry has a sawmill. You know that you’re a manly man (or womanly woman, as the case may be) if you can casually mention at swanky black-tie dinner parties that you have a sawmill. In the world of woodworking tools, this is akin to saying that you have a Formula One race car in your garage.

Larry has a vast collection of logs at his place. Much of this wood is local and most of the logs came into Larry’s possession after being felled by storms. Larry is mostly self-taught (headline: Local Logger Learns Lessons in Lumber) and has become a Jedi master in the art of woodworking.

Our youngest son and his wife recently moved into a new house, and it seemed appropriate to give them something in the way of a housewarming present. I could have simply gone to a retail outlet and purchased something, but that would be the easy, wimpy way of doing things. Besides, the message would be, “Congratulations for your new house! Here’s a chunk of plastic that was made in some overseas factory and is just like a million other chunks of plastic!”

So, I decided to make a hat rack. It symbolizes the notion that owning a house means that you have a place to hang your hat. It also sends the message, “Making something as simple as a ha track tested the limits of my woodworking abilities.”

The process began by asking Larry if he had a small slab of wood he could sell me. He generously offered a nice chunk of ash that had both of its live edges.

I decided to keep the live edges as a way to let the tree tell its story of its long and bug-riddled life. It was also a way for me to avoid squaring up the board, a critical procedure that I probably would have botched.

After much mental debate, I cut the board approximately in half and joined the two resulting pieces at a 90-degree angle. This would create room for a shelf in addition to space for a row of ha track hooks. Being thrifty by nature, I always enjoy getting a “twofer.”

Next came the sanding and the finishing. I sanded the thing so much – by hand, of course — that some areas of my shop became as dusty as the surface of the moon.

Applying varnish to wood can be magical. A piece of ho-hum lumber suddenly comes alive — not unlike Pinocchio — telling the tree’s story in vivid detail. In this case, its story was that there were several areas the needed additional sanding.

Once the varnish had dried, all that was left was to attach a row of hooks. I could have purchased hooks, but that would have been the easy, wimpy way of doing things.

A slender steel rod and a chunk of flat steel were acquired. The flat steel was heated to cherry-red and beaten with a ball peen, making it look as a hammered as a college freshman on a Friday night. The steel rod was hacksawed into what I deemed to be the proper length, heated with a cutting torch, pounded into a hangar-like shapes, and arc welded onto appropriately sized chunks of hammered flat iron. Holes for the screws that would attach the hangers to the board were bored with my drill press.

This process was a grand slam regarding the use of my shop’s tools: my welder, cutting torch, drill press, and new anvil. It was glorious!

After polishing the hooks, I decided to give them coat of glossy black paint, guessing that the black would create a nice contrast with the blonde wood. It was a good guess.

This project was challenging, but at least I didn’t do things the easy, wimpy way. And the end product could best be described as “rustic,” which is another way of saying “nothing fancy.” Just like me.

— Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.