Capitol Ideas: Speaker’s woodworking hobby branching out

CEDAR RAPIDS - When Speaker Kraig Paulsen gavels the Iowa House into session, he's swinging his own, handcrafted gavel.

Paulsen, a seventh-term Hiawatha lawmaker, also is a woodworker who began making gavels when he became speaker in 2011.

Now he's not the only Speaker of the House swinging a Paulsen gavel.

Paulsen has made a few gavels, including a ceremonial gavel he gave to former Iowa Senate President Jack Kibbie, D-Emmetsburg, before he retired in 2012. It was made from a piece of wood that had been removed from the statehouse during restoration work.

His most recent gavel gift was for Republican Minnesota Speaker of the House Kirk Daudt. They met at national legislative conferences.

'I told him that if he was ever in a position that he needed a gavel, I would make him one,” Paulsen said.

So when Daudt and Republicans took control of the Minnesota House, Paulsen went to work.

He doesn't expect to make gavels for all his speaker colleagues, though.

'It's not a 50-state thing,” Paulsen said.

He estimates it takes about three to four hours, plus time for glue to dry, to turn the head and shaft of a gavel in his workshop behind his garage in Hiawatha where he lives with his wife, Cathy.

In Daudt's case, he made two gavels. He had one made before Daudt sent him wood from a white oak tree on the Minnesotan's grandparents' farm.

'It's absolutely beautiful,” Daudt said about the gavel Paulsen made during his recent appearance on Twin Cities Public Television.

On the opening day of the Minnesota legislative session, Daudt told colleagues that the gavel would serve as a 'daily reminder of where I come from.”

Daudt presented the other Paulsen-made gavel to his speaker pro tempore.

In addition to gavels, Paulsen also built a table for the Speaker's Office behind the House Chambers. He has donated the table that was built from a walnut tree from the farm of Rep. Clel Baudler, R-Greenfield, to the Capitol's permanent collection.

It includes an inlay matching a design stenciled on the wall of the Speaker's Office. The intricate carving on the legs of the table mimic another desk in the office and was completed by a worker at Iowa Prison Industries.

He's also in the process of building a dining room table for his daughter, Kassandra.

His Iowa colleagues have picked up on the speaker's hobby. House Minority Leader Mark Smith, D-Marshalltown, also a woodworker, presented Paulsen with a receiver - a small block of wood the presiding officer pounds with his gavel to bring order.

In presenting the receiver, Smith told Paulsen: 'This receiver is made of Iowa hickory wood. Because one of the founders of the Democratic Party was called ‘Old Hickory,' I thought it was a fitting gift. When you are angry with the Democrats, you may strike it with gusto.”