Damon Harmon at R.G. Eaton Woodworks said he’s been doing millwork for almost 50 years, and making the new windows for the Portland City Hall clock tower is one of the hardest things he’s worked on in his career.
“It’s up there,” he said.
Eaton Woodworks on Rochester Street won the bid for reproducing the aging circular windows and has been working on them for the last couple weeks. The woodshop does architectural millwork and custom cabinetry, as well as some granite work for kitchen countertops.
Owner Bob Eaton, who’s been doing millwork for more than 30 years, agreed that the city hall windows are some of the most difficult he’s seen. “It’s quite challenging. I guess I enjoy the challenge,” Eaton said. “It’s really challenging to make things the way things were done years ago.”
Harmon said the windows are difficult to work on because they’re circular. “It’s tricky. Everything is curved,” he said. “It’s interesting to do a job like this and scratch your head over it.”
Eaton said his shop is one of a handful of medium-sized shops in the Greater Portland area making replacement parts for historic buildings and homes. He said he’s made custom windows, cabinetry, bars and interiors for homes and buildings all over the area.
Eaton said he worked for someone else for a few years and then opened his own shop on Bridge Street in 1984. Ten years later, he moved the shop to Rochester Street where it remains today.
A staff of 11 does all the work and runs the business, including Eaton’s wife, Martha Eaton, and daughter Michelle Sturgis. According to the Eatons, it’s a family affair. Martha Eaton said she worked for years in a family shop started by her grandfather in the early 1900s that did electric motor repair. Sturgis started working at Eaton Woodworks in the summers when she was younger and has worked full-time there for 12 years. Her mother provides general office help, and Sturgis runs the books.
Eaton said most of the shop’s business is in the greater Portland area, but it also does work out of state. For out-of-state jobs, companies send him blueprints and he and his team reproduce the pieces and ship them to the buyer. For local work, Eaton said he works with the clients more closely. He said most of his local work is residential versus commercial.
Eaton said the shop has created storefronts for Hallmark stores across the country. Locally, he said he’s done work for St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Kennebunkport next to former President George Bush Sr.’s home. He also did the kitchen in former Gov. Angus King’s home. In Portland, the shop has worked for Three Dollar Dewey’s, Cinque Terre and the Dry Dock in the Old Port.
Eaton is quick to point out that his shop isn’t just a woodworking shop, and that much is evident in the office where samples of custom cabinetry hangs on the walls. Pieces are beautifully shaped and finished, and the shop uses all kinds of woods, including mahogany, cherry, Spanish cedar, ash.
Eaton said he always wanted to do millwork and sees it as a lost art. He said his favorite part is working with clients trying to restore older buildings and homes, recreating the old ways of doing things while he’s at it. He said he sees new things all the time on the old buildings and homes he works on, evidence of the variety of styles of doing millwork.
Eaton said it’s hard to find skilled people in his profession, which he said takes a long time to master. He said much of it requires creating metal cutting pieces to match the profile of whatever window or piece he’s working on, then using the metal pieces to cut the wood.
“It’s hard to find skilled people, so now they’re starting to try to replace people with robotics,” he said.
In fact, Eaton owns a robotics machine himself, which he said the shop uses for about a quarter of its work. He said the shop would be using the machine to cut certain pieces of the city hall windows.
Eaton said he’ll be working on the windows for quite a while, and he’s slated to install them over the course of a week at the end of October and early November.
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