Friends of the Carpenter tool, product sale underway

Visit Friends of the Carpenter’s website to learn more about its mission.

What Friends of the Carpenter has to offer — conversation, connection, compassion — isn’t for sale. It’s always free.

But nobody has a problem accepting dollars in exchange for the wood products that get cranked out by volunteers and homeless people who gather daily at the nonprofit workshop, warehouse and Christian outreach ministry in west Vancouver. The gently used tools and equipment that often get donated are a good source of cash for the place, too.

So Friends of the Carpenter is holding a tool and product sale that started Friday and continues today. Today’s hours are 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the facility at 1600 W. 20th St. (your first right as you come off the Mill Plain Extension bridge, westbound).

From blessing boxes to pocket crosses, from wall plaques to picture frames, from cutting boards and trivets to Christmas ornaments and toy trains — the best thing about these lovingly crafted products, volunteer Frank Stowe said, is the way they facilitated new friendships.

“We break down barriers and divisions,” said executive Tom Iberle. Visitors are always noting that they can’t tell who’s a volunteer and who’s a genuinely homeless person, he said. They’re all just people — working and chatting together, building skills and making beautiful things.

“People like to say they come here for the woodworking,” Stowe said, but a vast amount of talk happens between people who might never have met while they’re bending their heads over common projects. “Every day we see miracles.”