Cutting edge: Broken Branch Carvings owner watches passion project become a business

MOSES LAKE — Much like one of his wood carvings, Cole Liebrecht didn’t see his business becoming what it has when he first picked up the craft in November 2019. But what started as a passion project transformed before his eyes.

Liebrecht started Broken Branch Carvings a little more than a year ago, crafting works of art out of blocks and logs of wood for customers. Liebrecht works out of a shop at his Ephrata home on the weekends when he’s off work.

A lifelong artist, Liebrecht said he became interested in woodcarving years ago after seeing a few shows on the subject on Netflix.

He watched the craftsmen on “Saw Dogs” and “Carver Kings” transform sometimes 100-year-old fallen trees into complete works of art. Ryan Cook, one of the carvers featured on the show, was someone Liebrecht said he homed in on. He said Cook can carve anything, from wood to fruit to ice. Watching these men use some of the most dangerous tools to make something they shouldn’t be able to was fascinating, he said.

“There’s times they find trees that are fallen or parts of them are busted off and give the tree a second life that lasts for a long time,” Liebrecht said. “These trees, what I find cool, is some of them are 100 years old and you’ve just given it this new life and they can live even longer now, so that’s kind of neat.”

After telling himself he wanted to give carving a try, he finally took the leap about a year ago, after he purchased his first saw with some birthday money. He started watching videos on YouTube, including videos of Cook working, before giving it a shot.

His first carving, a Christmas tree, was atrocious in his eyes, Liebrecht said. But his wife said she thought he could sell it on Facebook. Within 10 minutes, the piece was sold.

Liebrecht said he’s also been fortunate enough to connect with Cook through Facebook and was able to get some private tutoring and lessons from the man who inspired him to pick up the trade. He said the lessons he learned from Cook greatly sped up his craft.

“The patience that he had and the ability to just fine-tune the craft was great,” Liebrecht said. “Should I have my own show? Not by any means yet, but the growth I had just in these few months being able to work with him was cool to really see my carvings grow.”

While Cook is not an artist himself, Liebrecht said his artistic background definitely helped him despite the two crafts being very different.

“It’s nothing like drawing for sure, but it’s almost like riding a bike and then going to a motorcycle,” Liebrecht said. “You have that sense of balance and that can take you places toward learning that.”

As a wood carver, he said one of the biggest challenges is seeing “what’s in the wood.” Figuring out what is going to come out of the carving is something Liebrecht said he continues to learn with each project.

The carving process can be an emotional roller coaster, he said, especially first starting out.

“You get so upset because maybe you make a bad cut or you’re not seeing it the way you envisioned it, and then five minutes later you think, oh, no I see it,” Liebrecht said. “I didn’t screw up. And then five minutes later, you’re back on the roller coaster.”

An orca and giraffe are two projects coming up Liebrecht said he knows will have learning curves with them. But, he said he uses a lot of references whenever he starts a project. For example, if he is working on a fish carving, he will pull up photos of the fish from top, bottom, sides and so on to get an idea of what he’s looking for.

The tools help out a lot, too. Liebrecht said he uses blocking saws for many of the rougher features before finishing up details and dramatic features with dime-tip saws. Red cedar wood is his favorite to work with, but can be hard to come by in the Basin.

Most of the wood he works with is poplar wood, Liebrecht said.

“When you look at a poplar tree, it doesn’t seem like there’s much there in the wood, but when you start diving into them, you get a lot of beautiful colors that are actually in the wood,” Liebrecht said.

Broken Branch Carvings has gotten much bigger than Liebrecht ever thought it would. He said he went from seeking potential customers to being booked up to three months out.

Liebrecht said his parents, business owners in Moses Lake, bought one of his first bear carvings. While dropping off a more recent bear carving for a customer at their business, he said he noticed the difference in quality between the two and told his parents that he’d need to replace theirs with a “revised one.”

He said he has done a number of interesting carvings and projects over the years, but a more simplistic one is the project that means the most to him. A coworker of his accidentally broke a hatchet years ago that a friend lent him, which belonged to the friend’s late father.

Liebrecht carved a new handle for the hatchet with the father’s name and the years he was alive in addition to a custom mount that could be hung on the wall.

“It was just a huge keepsake that he could remember his dad with and that meant a lot to me,” Liebrecht said.

While it started as a passion project, Liebrecht said he would love to see the business grow to become his sole profession, while working from home.

“It would be awesome to do what I love and what I’m passionate about and be able to be there with my kids and take them to school,” Liebrecht said.

Casey McCarthy can be reached at cmccarthy@columbiabasinherald.com.