Minnesota man uses discarded wood to build canoes, fishing gear

OAK GROVE, Minn. — Inside an unassuming workshop, Jesse Gerhard is painstakingly building a canoe with locally discarded wood.  

"This is from a church in Crystal, the actual plywood. The redwood is from someone's deck in Princeton, Minnesota and then this white pine is from a barn in Lake Elmo," said Jesse Gerhard, of American Craftsmen.

His father taught him as a teen to build nice things out of what others thought was trash.

"He couldn't buy us bikes or anything. So, he'd pick us up and throw us in the dumpster and we'd find bikes and we'd cobble together one bike out of three different bikes that we'd found," he said.

When they weren't fixing, they were working on job sites.

"He jokes that he got charged with child labor laws a couple times," laughed Gerhard.

When it came time to relax, they'd go out on a lake.

"We grew up wader fishing, so I'd walk into the water, and I remember going into a couple bass fishing tournaments. We walked into the water, and we'd come out with a stringer full of fish," he said.

Without a boat, they were disqualified for their catches.

After high school and several years in the Marine Corps and law enforcement, Gerhard transitioned into making things with degrees earned in wood finishing and cabinetmaking. 

For the last 15 years, those skills have led Gerhard to build canoes, then paddles and lures. Lures that require testing.

"Yeah, that's always a tricky thing. Go make a prototype and then go out and fish when it's frozen half the year," he laughed.

Gerhard has branched out to make fishing nets, tackle boxes and other items because he's always dreaming up a new idea.

"As the pieces get smaller, I can make something else out of it. I don't want to be wasteful either," he said.

Preserve what you can, work hard and treat people with respect — these are important lessons Gerhard learned from his own father that he's now passing down to his son.

"I go around and I find wood in the dumpster and stuff, my son is a little bit apprehensive about that. 'We're going through a dumpster. Is anybody seeing what I'm doing,'" he said.

Gerhard sells his products through his company, American Craftsmen. It has an online shop. He'll also be back with his booth at the Minnesota State Fair in August.