Jim Staley thought his woodworking days were behind him after he and his wife moved from their house in Durham to The Forest at Duke retirement community four years ago.

"I'd had a wood shop at home, and though there's one here at Forest at Duke, I thought that part of my life was pretty much over," he said. "We were traveling a lot. My thing then was I took video and still shots and when we got home I'd make a DVD of the trip. But after 9/11 it's become such a hassle to travel."

Besides, because Staley didn't have a place to keep his personal tool collection, he had sold it.

"That was my big mistake. But I didn't sell this one special tool called a Ring Master. It was an impulse buy at a woodworker show and I'd never used it. We were here about six months when I told my wife, 'I feel like doing some woodworking.' She's really supportive of my work. And so I took that Ring Master down to the shop."

Since then, Staley has become a master of the Ring Master, cutting wood into rings and creating a variety of striking segmented vessels, often combining several kinds of wood.

Lifetime of wood: Although this form of woodworking is new to Staley, 73, he's been playing with wood since he was a boy. "I can remember my mother buying me this little saw, it was electric, like a coping saw. I remember sawing things out of that and making things in the house. Before I retired I started making furniture, jewel boxes, a grandfather clock case and a hutch that I made the stained glass for."

Lifelong learning: A decade ago, after a career in engineering in Pittsburgh, Staley moved with his wife, Nora, to Durham. In North Carolina he learned several new skills, including wood turning. "I took several classes with Alan Leland [in Durham]. Everything I do right I give the credit to him, and the stuff I do wrong, that's not his fault."

Doing and teaching: These days Staley figures he puts in about 30 hours of week in the shop at The Forest at Duke. "I've added equipment at my own cost and donated it and the Forest has upgraded the equipment," said Staley, chairman of the wood shop." When I started, there was only one other fellow who was a regular. We now have four regulars, so I've doubled the number," he laughed. He holds woodworking workshops and organizes exhibits at Forest at Duke, including one later this month.

Piece by piece: Staley uses more than a dozen types of domestic and exotic wood, and likes to mix and match colors and grains. To make his segmented vessels, Staley creates rings that he glues together. "If you cut them at the correct angle, they fit exactly one on top of the other and you can make a three-dimensional object. I started out making pieces from one piece of wood. Then after I got the skill I started gluing pieces of wood together in patterns. I do the patterns in my head, but I wrote a computer program, called Protoshaper, to design the shape."

Branching out: "After a while it felt pretty limiting with just the Ring Master," Staley said. "So I thought, I'll get a lathe, because you can make more complicated, deeper things. I make a 12-sided hollow prism and turn it on the lathe to make it circular." One Forest at Duke resident, an art collector, saw Staley's work and encouraged him to start selling it. "He said he thought I was starting to make gallery-quality work." Staley now has his work at three locations in the state.

Engineering and art: Staley has found yet another use for the Ring Master. Every Friday at N.C. State University until the semester ends he's mentoring a group of Materials Science and Engineering students in their senior project. "We're using the Ring Master to do a scientific evaluation of various steels used in wood-turning," Staley said. "Manufacturers are making all of these claims that theirs wears longer, but they never show any evidence. We're using five or six different steels and we're making rings on the Ring Master and as they wear the students are looking at it with electronic microscopes." He plans to present his findings at the national meeting of the American Association of Woodturners in Richmond in June. "I finally married my engineering side with my art side," he said.