Cowboy Hat Becomes Carver's Biggest Challenge

MANCHESTER - Harold Rosauer has carved 993 lifelike birds, taking up to 900 hours to finish one. He has carved 40,000 wooden bird feather pins, so lifelike you'd think a slight breeze could carry them away. But he's never carved anything as difficult as a cowboy hat.

"I've tried five of them; these are the only two I've been able to finish."

He uses freshly cut hard maple so it's still moist, turning the modified bowl on a lathe, cutting here and there, shaping here and there, finishing it in one day before the wood is too dry.

"Look," he says, holding one up to the light. "You can see right through it."

That fragile nature is why Harold broke the brims right off the other three hats while making them.

Accustomed to selling everything he makes, Harold, 73, isn't quite ready to part with either of the hats. He'll probably try another one when he finds the time.

"People say, Harold, you're not retired," says the 37-year physical education teacher at Colesburg and Manchester. "I say, yes I am. I'd doing what I love to do."

As a hunter and a fisherman in his free time, you can find Harold out in a tree stand with his crossbow at the ready or, for two weeks every month during the summer, at his cabin on Minnesota's Leach Lake catching Northern Pike. (He once caught a 54-inch, 45-pound Muskie.)

But, you're just as likely to find Harold at his saw or lathe, with a carving knife or a paint brush as he works beneath a magnifying glass.

To say he's meticulous is as obvious as saying the early bird gets the worm. Once, after carving a robin, Harold dug up a night crawler and put it in the bird's mouth. That provided inspiration to spend another nine hours carving the worm that now dangles from the robin's beak.

With dozens upon dozens of awards, including some world championships during his nearly 40-year career as a carver, Harold still loves the birds, but not the feathers so much.

"My business is The Wooden Feathers," he says. "That has been the biggest pain the butt for me. It's a pain to make the same thing over and over."

He will produce 40 nearly identical feathers at a time, paint them and mount them. Each takes about three hours, selling for 420 to $40 each.

"I usually like to sit down and work on one thing at a time until I get it done," he says.

That can mean some days working from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. It can mean 20, 50, 100, 300 hours per bird. As a result, when Harold takes orders, people have to give him plenty of lead time. His goldfinch sells for $190, a wren is $220, a mallard, $700.

While he's thought about making an eagle, he has resisted the urge.

"I figure that would take 2,000 hours, cost $20,000," he says. "It would take me a year to do an eagle."

Usually, if Harold calculated his hours to the sale price, even for a ruffed grouse he once sold for $13,500, he's not even earning the equivalent of a teacher's salary. But that's not the point. Carving, whether it's a 400-hour blue-winged teal, a black ash burl bowl or a fragile wooden cowboy hat, is his passion.

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