Driving Our Economy Forward: Encraft

RINGGOLD, Ga. (WDEF) — They call him the Dinosaur Man.

Jim LaMance’s North Georgia woodworking business, Encraft, is “Where Old-world Craftsmanship meets New-world Technology.”

And these historic creatures are some of the wooden items he designs.

Let’s see how Encraft is driving our economy forward.

“So, I’m an engineer, and when I was in school at Auburn, my job to get beer money for college was working in the shop, in the theater, and that’s where I got the creative and the woodworking start,” LaMance said.

“I love working with artists and creative people and designers and making the things that they imagine come to life.

Like dinosaurs.

“I was fascinated by the idea of can I make a dinosaur?” he said. “I saw one and I said, ‘I wonder if I can make that.’ You’ve seen the pattern, just a bunch of squiggly lines. Then we pulled it off the machine and we put the 3D puzzle together. It’s a big 3D puzzle, and it was just super fun. And I said, that’s it. I’m going to make some dinosaurs. I reached out to toy stores because that seemed a logical place. And Learning Express was wonderful and really engaged with us. And I think we’ve made a very cool product.”

“We do glass blowing tools. We can laser. We can engrave. We can do beautiful inlays. We’ve made Christmas trees. We’ve made little parts for construction, and we’ve made air vents and bar rails. And we make almost everything.”

“So, this is a product you can go buy from Ignis today,” LaMance said. “We work with Chris to make that. We made different parts for him, for that. It’s his glass. So working together is the way – woodworkers, glass blowers, metal workers, and all of those crafts work together all the time. Now we think of them as disparate, they’re really not. They never have been even though we think of them that way. So, I love to work together with the other craftsmen. So, if you can imagine it, we can make it for you.”