Who are we?

(Well… right now we is just me, but hopefully, we’ll grow in time!)

Hello! My name is Evan! I work in corporate finance by day and in a garage woodshop by night. Although Oak &Honey started in 2021, the journey to get here started long before. I have been building, tinkering with, and fixing things for as long as I can remember (and if we are being honest, much of the time I was the reason things needed to be fixed). I always loved hands-on learning and working with real-world objects. My passion for making comes from an upbringing that fostered curiosity and creativity. Whether it was building a trebuchet for a science fair project or working on my uncle’s kitchen, I was given room to make mistakes and encouraged to experiment and learn. More personally, fixing things around my parent’s house has served as a way to get to know my grandfather who passed away when I was very young. Navigating his work is almost like having a conversation with him.

Enough about your backstory! How did Oak & Honey Woodshop get started?

Oak & Honey Woodshop as we know it may not have started until 2021, but I can trace back the first project that ultimately led to all this as far back as 2017. My sister asked if I could build her a card box and a “guest book” board. What kind of brother would be if I said no!? Well, after that project friends and family kept asking me to make more and more things, including one of my favorite projects to date, a custom wine rack that fits in the old coal storage alcove in my parent’s basement. Those same people encouraged me to create an Instagram to catalog and show off my work. It wasn’t until I made my second cutting board that I finally said, “screw it”, and took the plunge. Things have grown ever since despite, as my one friend loves to remind me, my instance that this will always be a small hobby and nothing more.

Cool, cool, but uh… what’s with the name?

Funny story! My “COVID hobby” was mead making (also known as honey wine). During my first MBA marketing class, my group decided to use my homebrew as the product for our class project. Realizing “Mead For The Apocalypse” as it was originally called wasn’t school friendly, I workshopped something a little classier. Thus Oak & Honey was born, incorporating the main ingredient and the aging process in the name. Deciding the name was still applicable for my woodworking, I kept. If you think about it, the woodshop is sort of a subsidiary of the mead “business”*

*As funny as that is, selling homebrew alcohol is pretty illegal so I can’t sell any here, but I may be able to hook you up with a free sample if you ask nicely