Bill Abell, a whittler from rural McPherson County, shows off one of his prized possessions, a miniature log cabin he built that features working lights and chimney. Abell attributes his hobby to his time working at the National Cooperative Refinery Association, when he would whittle after making his rounds.

McPherson ? Most people look at a tree and see branches and leaves reaching out to the heavens, but to 85-year-old Bill Abell, trees can be anything from a cowboy hat or a kicking mule to a loaf of a bread and a log cabin.

That is because Abell is a carver, not for any sort of financial profit, but for the spiritual release he finds whenever he puts his metal blade to a block of wood.

Abell said he started carving in 1961. At that time, he worked at the National Cooperative Refinery Association and after making rounds, he would have little to do to occupy his time. Instead of sleeping, like some of his co-workers did, Abell said he used that time to whittle pieces of wood.

“I’d pick up wood and mess around and try to make a little something,” said Abell. “A lot of guys would sleep for 30 minutes, but if something went wrong, they wouldn’t know where they were going. I always believed if something went wrong it was my job to fix my part of it.”

Abell grew up in a town about 40 miles away from Dallas, Texas.

In 1946, after completing his service in the military, he came to McPherson to visit a friend who had moved to the area. While in McPherson, Abell met his future wife, who worked in the telephone office, and married her a year and a half later.

“It just so happened that her dad was a chemist at the refinery, he spoke for me and then I was hired,” he said. “People have all been wonderful to me up here.”

The first thing Abell made out of wood was a miniature log cabin. The cabin features a stone chimney that smokes when incense is lit inside and also has working lights.

The logs that make up the walls of the cabin are made from honeysuckle wood, which Abell got from his neighbor after he found that the elm would he was attempting to use at first was so full of knots that it wouldn’t lie flat. “It’s like it was made for it; it fits really close,” said Abell. “And hundreds of little heads have looked in that thing since I made it.”

One of his prized wood carvings is a full set of working pipe wrenches which he worked on for nine or 10 months. He said someone from the Smithsonian Institute even offered to buy the wrenches and Abell had to explain to the man that the wrenches were not for sale.

“He asked what I would take for them and I said I wouldn’t sell them,” he said . “He said he’d never seen a wood pipe wrench like that before in his life.”

In fact, Abell has never made a dime off of his projects.

He simply makes them for himself when he has time on cold or extremely windy days, when the weather won’t permit him to leave the house.

“When it snows and you live in the country, it leaves you handicapped,” he said. “But you can sit there with a pocket knife and come out with something. I liked to work outside, but when the snow was blowing, I made use of my time.”

Abell said he prefers to make things that other people don’t. He has made wooden road runners, covered wagons, roses and other flower assortments, fruit and even a loaf of bread.

But around McPherson, Abell is most known for his wooden cowboy hats. They don’t take long to make, and Abell said they remind him of being in Texas.

Abell said he often gets calls from strangers asking if he is the one who makes wooden hats and how much he charges for them.

“The cowboy hats represent where I was born and raised. It’s not a Kansas boy making that, it’s an old Texas boy who came up and stayed here,” he said. “I don’t have any hats for sale, but if people ever came by looking for one, I always have a few to give.”