Column: Shorelines

KAREN DILLON

Moneta resident Hugh Key stands with the 70-year-old metal lathe he uses to make wooden works of art, including his wooden bottle stoppers.

Karen Dillon

Some of Hugh Key's wooden wine bottle stoppers that are awaiting another coat of mineral oil.

Like many woodworkers, Hugh Key likes to take old pieces of wood and turn them into works of art. But these beauties aren't your typical wooden bowls or platters meant to sit on a shelf. They are fully functional wooden wine stoppers.

"Most of the wood I work with is scrap," said Key, who's been known to stop on the side of the road to pick up a stray piece of wood. "In fact, I prefer stuff with character."

The Moneta resident can make a variety of wooden art but prefers instead to make wine stoppers. To date, he's made about 600 and has sold more than half of his current stock.

He contracts with nearly two dozen retail businesses and wineries throughout the region to sell his stoppers, transforming his part-time hobby and love of woodturning into quite an enterprise.

Key got into making wooden wine stoppers after he purchased one while on a trip years ago.

"I said 'I could be making this if I could find a place to buy the plastic [stopper],'" recalled Key, who eventually found a supplier in Roanoke.

Key creates his stoppers in the garage of the Mayberry Hills home he shares with his wife, Mary, a retired nurse. He shows off neatly stacked scraps of wood on wire shelving, plastic tubs of stoppers he keeps in the trunk of his car, and his woodworking tool of choice -- a 70-year-old metal lathe he's owned for about 40 of those years.

Having a metal lathe allows Key to work with any kind of wood, whether it's a weathered board or a piece of treated lumber.

"I can cut through wood or knots or just about anything with it," said Key.

Each stopper is unique, and some feature brilliant designs that are produced from the grain in the wood.

The retired textile engineer first taught himself woodworking at age 13 after buying a homemade lathe for about $20. The metal lathe is the second one he's ever owned and, even as heavy as it is, it's moved with the couple many, many times over the years.

"It's traveled a lot more than some people have," said Key, after listing all the places the couple has lived, from Colorado and Connecticut to Roanoke and Glen Allen. The couple settled in Moneta because it's close to family, which includes two daughters, a son and eight grandchildren.

In addition to his wine bottle stoppers, Key makes holders for merchants to use for displaying his wine stoppers in their stores. He also makes pencil holders, tiny cups and votive candle holders out of wood.

And the most unusual thing he makes? Wine stoppers that double as votive candle holders.

"I've never seen anybody make a candle holder for the top of a bottle before," said Key.

Currently, Key's creations are sold in nearly two dozen stores across the lake, in Roanoke and places as far north as Charlottesville.

The wooden wine stoppers retail for $6 apiece. The votive candle stoppers sell for about $12 each.

While he doesn't necessarily have a whole lot of space to spread out, Key has no complaints. This hobby has become a good side business for him.

"I'm sort of following it wherever it takes me," said Key. "I get to travel around to places to show people what I've got."

His wife doesn't mind either.

"He keeps coming up with more unusual designs," said Mary.

Practical designs, too. He makes a flat wooden stopper that will allow a bottle of leftover wine to fit neatly into the refrigerator without having to turn it on its side.

Hugh Key's wine bottle stoppers are sold at area wineries and retail stores including A Shade Brighter in Downtown Moneta at Smith Mountain Lake (across from Mayberry Hills). For more information, e-mail Key at hughkey@jetbroadband.com.