Keeping spirit alive in wood

Walter Sprague
Art and Culture Reporter
 
Wyoming’s registered trademark, the Bucking Horse and Rider, exemplifies the people’s independent spirit and never-give-up attitude. Registered in 1936 by the state of Wyoming and adorning our license plates for years, the silhouette was the emblem embossed on the U.S. Mint’s bicentennial quarter for Wyoming in 2007. For most, it honors Wyoming’s military men and women and represents the state’s fighting spirit.
Nowhere is that fighting spirit exemplified better than in Dwight Souder, owner and wood smith of Dite’s Tinkering Designs. 
“I’ve dabbled in woodcraft most of my life,” Souder said, “I was introduced to it in high school.”
Souder studied drafting and design in college and designed cages for zoos and other entities. The cages were for anything from butterflies to primates. He has also worked on road and bridge projects for 15 years. 
But the creative side of his personality finally won out, and he turned to woodcrafts. In 2009, he got a license to use the bucking horse and rider logo and began crafting inlay objects with that design out of more exotic woods, such as black walnut and cherry wood. He loves the high contrast of bonding different woods together. 
Souder was making signs, cutting boards, cribbage boards and the like, often with custom names or short sayings inlaid on them. He uses a process called computerized numerically controlled routing. Using a computer that controls his equipment, the router cuts out the pre-made design. First, a fine bit cuts out the design’s outline, utilizing a couple of passes, and takes larger sections out of the object’s finer details. Then, a more significant bit is put to work, taking out the rest of the silhouette. This process prevents splintering around the edges and makes it easier for the inlay to be inserted and glued in place. The computer control is precise; there is only a 15/1000th-inch difference between the inlay and the cutout. Once the object has dried overnight, he uses a sanding planer to smooth everything, and the last step is the finishing coat. 
But in January 2017, a potential medical tragedy struck. 
“I had a tumor on my pituitary gland that pulled the optic nerves from my left eye and damaged the nerves on my right,” he said. 
Souder is now completely blind in his left eye and has lost much of his peripheral vision in his right eye. He says that he owes a lot of his ability to keep going to his sister and friends, who not only supported his decision to keep working but sometimes pushed him not to give up.
“I feared losing it all,” Souder said, “The building, my clientele, all my equipment.” But he pressed on. “I did a lot of soul-searching, and I quickly realized that I just couldn’t give in. So, I learned how to do the work even though I couldn’t see the entire computer screen.”
Now he has high contrast and enlarged cursers on his computer and has to scan around the screen to see the object he will cut. He has had to persevere through the difficulties and figure out how to see what he needs to see. Using hundreds of saved image files and often having to create files for special orders, he still makes the cutting boards, cribbage boards, coasters and custom signs for clients, as well as plenty of other items.
“I even stayed busy during the COVID shutdowns,” he said, “And while everyone was hit hard with that, I still was able to do my work pretty
consistently.” 
One of his recent clients, The Wyoming Tree Farm Committee, commissioned him to create a large bucking horse and rider sculpture, made from locally grown and milled ponderosa pine, for the American Legion. After cutting out the image and sanding it down, he used a Japanese technique called Shou Sugi Ban too lightly burn the wood, which helps to preserve the wood. He also lacquered the finished product, and on March 9, he presented it to the Legion, where it now hangs above the fireplace at the Newcastle Armory, the group’s meeting place.
Souder also does metal and plastic engraving, in much the same way, but using different equipment. Dite’s Tinkering Designs is located at 1517 W. Main St., and you can contact Souder at (307) 746-5482. There are plenty of pre-made beautiful woodcrafts for sale there, or if you have that unique one-of-a-kind item in mind, he can help with that as well.