You read it right. Homestead Furniture, builder of fine custom furniture, has also built a car.

Well, let’s be more specific. Homestead Furniture has helped restore the wooden section of a 1941 Buick station wagon, commonly referred to in antique car circles as a Woody.

The wooden portion of the car is in its final stages of being competed. So how did a furniture store in the heart of Ohio’s Amish country get involved restoring a Woody?

Here’s the story.

Ernie Hershberger, the owner of Homestead Furniture, likes to utter his favorite saying, “We can build what want, any wood, any way.”

Last winter, one of his customers took him up on that challenge. A restorer of antique cars, the customer asked if Homestead Furniture could help him restore the old Buick station wagon he was working on.

The customer could do the metal chassis, hood and fenders. He needed someone who could accurately and skillfully match the original model. He inquired if Homestead Furniture might be willing to try such a challenge. And of course, the answer was in the affirmative.

Always up for a challenge, Ernie invited the customer to bring his project down. Immediately, the workers knew they wanted to give it a try.

When the old, dilapidated car arrived at the manufacturing shop, it was in sad shape. Much of the wood carriage had decayed far beyond being of any use as a template. That didn’t deter the craftsmen at Homestead Furniture.

The customer brought another Woody along so the craftsmen could see first-hand what the finished product should look like. Thus began an eight-month project of carefully restoring the old Woody.

For this project, Hershberger assigned the one worker he figured could pull off the transformation. Eli Miller, a young man in his 20s, got the assignment.

Piece by piece, Miller measured, cut, sanded and replaced the rotted old frame with new, snug wooden parts. The front doors alone took a month to rebuild.

To imitate the original, Miller had to create his own molds to fashion, shape and match the curves and bends in the wood-sided car. He even created his patterns for his tools to follow so particular grooves could be emulated.

Now the Woody is nearly restored using ash and ribbon mahogany to create the two toned effect of the original car. It has been truly a unique opportunity to reconstruct a car in a woodshop designed for building hand-tooled furniture.

Perhaps it is not as ironic though as it might seem. The manufacturing shop at Homestead Furniture was designed on the principles used by Toyota to build its vehicles.

Called cell manufacturing, each work area has one worker who builds one piece of furniture. Or in this particular case, one restored car.

We hope to have a special event at Homestead Furniture featuring the car once it is fully restored. We’ll keep you informed.