Northeast Ohio native Steve Wargo returned from the service in 1996, and he and his wife Christine purchased a farmhouse on the far east side of Cleveland. As they began to get their new house in order, Steve found himself involved in many general carpentry projects around the house. Deciding to try his hand at building some of their own furniture, Steve soon discovered he had both a talent and a love for designing and building furniture. By 2000, he was selling his first dovetail step stools and coffee tables, and the concept of Mad Hunky Workshop was taking form. Steve and Christine sold their farmhouse, moved to Strongsville in 2003, and were joined in business by Paul Warnock, another accomplished woodworker, in early 2004. We visited with Steve recently, and listened as he explained how beauty and functionality are incorporated into every piece that leaves the shop floor;
Mad Hunky Workshop specializes in designing and crafting the area's finest, hand made furniture and woodworking pieces. From selecting the choicest pieces of lumber to working the old-fashioned way with hand tools, we spare no effort in our quest for perfection. Our goal is to produce items of such high quality that you'll not only be proud to have them in your home, they'll become family treasures that are handed down through generations to come.
We'll spend hours at one of the local sawyers' lumber yards making sure we've selected the perfect wood. We study the grain, imagining how it will flow into another piece of wood, an angle, or a curve. We search for the joy that can be found seeing every piece of wood complimenting the one next to it, playing an integral part in elevating your customized piece to a work of art. Each piece is hand cut to fit perfectly into place, and hand scraped to produce a smoothness that can rarely be duplicated with sandpaper.
Each of our veneers is 100% natural wood applied over a solid wood or top quality plywood substrate. The majority of our finishes are applied by hand, too, whether they're French polished shellac, hand lacquered, or simply finished with an oil wax. We accent your piece with only the finest hardware to be found. Wooden handles, pulls, and door knobs are crafted with the same care and loving attention to detail you'll find in all of our products. We can install solid brass hardware, powder-coated hardware, or we will have your hardware custom-crafted at a local machine shop to enhance your piece's unique, one-of-a-kind appearance.
Each piece from Mad Hunky Workshop is designed for aesthetic as well as functional elegance. By adhering to time-honored woodworking techniques, we can ensure that your furniture functions as well sixty years from now as it does today. For example, if we build a chest of drawers for you, you'll find that instead of metal drawer runners, we build our drawers to run on wood, the same as they were built 150 years ago. Drawers built in the mid-1800s are still working fine today, and we see no reason to give you less functionality.
We've recently started teaching small woodworking classes in our shop. Each class is usually between two and four people in size, and we cover everything from building coffee tables and decorative wall cabinets, to running a router, hand planing, sharpening your tools, the proper application of finishes, and selecting tools that will serve you well throughout the years.
With each piece of furniture delivered, our goal is to surpass all of your expectations. I recently delivered a piece of furniture, and after removing the protective blankets, I noticed that the customer was frozen in place, just standing there looking at it. I asked, "Well, is it what your were hoping for.?" A moment later, he turned to me, still speechless, and simply began to shake my hand. A response like that says more about our quality than words ever could.
Mad Hunky Workshop is Northeast Ohio's home for hand made furniture and woodworking pieces of distinction. Recieve a special discount by calling Mad Hunky Workshop today and telling them The Advocate sent you!
