ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, May 7, 1996 TAG: 9605070092
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
WAYNE Hypes makes eggs.
White eggs, dark eggs, in-between eggs. Sleek eggs. Light eggs, heavy eggs. Rare and exotic eggs.
Eggs and eggs and eggs.
He makes them out of wood. Out of divi-divi trees from Venezuela, and monkey pod trees from the Philippines. Out of ebony from the Celebes, teak from Burma, wenge from Zaire.
Hypes makes eggs from Virginia trees, too. Indeed, it is the eggs he made from good old dogwoods, elms and oaks - not Ceylon satinwoods or Japanese walnuts - that have given Hypes, at 75, his well-deserved 15 minutes of fame.
Understand that Hypes does not sell eggs - or anything else he makes, for that matter.
A Craig County native and retired soil conservationist, Hypes makes things for his kids, his grandkids, his friends, himself. His egg collection is mounted on a wall of his basement, far from most admiring eyes.
But he is a gregarious soul, with a generous nature. Last fall, Hypes was chatting with some friends in the forestry department of Virginia Tech - Hypes is a Hokie himself, class of `41 - and he got to talking about his eggs.
One thing led to another. Before long Hypes had offered to send Tech some eggs to use as teaching aids.
"I just had an extra set," Hypes explained. "I packed them up in a box and mailed them over there."
Thus, the fame.
Not to put too fine a point on it. The school did send out a press release about the gift, however.
Tech forestry professors, meanwhile, were tickled pink.
"I will be using them every time I teach my wood identification class," said an assistant professor, Audrey Zink - who also called the eggs "unique." Zink teaches in the school's wood science and forest products department, where students learn to identify many different kinds of wood.
Hypes, who has made eggs of wood from all over the world, sent Tech duplicates from his Virginia collection. The eggs from the rest of the world remain in his Staunton home.
The gift to Tech is currently kept in Zink's office in - what else? - egg cartons. She is hoping to have a display case made soon.
Hypes gave Tech 108 eggs in all, a fair chunk of the flora of Virginia. There are spruce eggs, pine eggs, 19 different kinds of oak eggs.
There are eggs made of maple, cedars, baldcypress and a host of other Virginia-grown trees and shrubs, including poison ivy.
Yes, poison ivy.
"That might even be the one," said Zink, indicating the smooth, light-grained egg a reporter was just then holding in both hands.
It was.
Hypes, interviewed later in his own home, explained that he is not susceptible to poison ivy. He also said he let the thick vine he dragged home dry for many months before he cut it - and then he wore a mask over his nose and mouth.
So why eggs?
Hypes was simply thumbing through a woodworking magazine one day, he said, and came across an advertisement for wooden eggs.
"They looked pretty," he explained. The prices, however - ranging from $5 to $25 - were a little steep. "I thought, shucks, I can't afford that."
So he began to make his own.
Hypes has no pattern for his eggs, which he shapes with cutting tools as they spin on his lathe. Shaping two eggs takes Hypes about 30 minutes - considerably less time than it takes a chicken - though he gives them a coat of wax afterward. Before he even begins, Hypes lets his wood cure for several months.
He gets his raw material for eggs on hikes, from friends, and - in the case of the more exotic woods - from his membership in the International Wood Collectors Society, a group of some 6,000 people who are busily mailing wood to one another from far-flung corners of the globe.
"They've got members all over the world, and we trade wood," Hypes explained. "I just got these two boxes of wood from Australia. I've got the names of them but I can't pronounce any of them."
Hypes even owns a chunk of an olive tree, from the garden of Gethsemane - perhaps as close as a guy on a pension will ever come to owning a piece of the True Cross.
He has no plans to put it on his lathe, however. "It's not big enough to make an egg out of," he said.
Hypes has always made things.
Since his very first effort - a coat rack, made back in his school days - he has filled a basement with toys and games and ornaments. There is a wagon made from a Coca Cola crate, a dogwood rolling pin, and a whole set of chess pieces - maple for light, walnut for dark. "Just junky things that I've made," he said.
Eggs, it turns out, aren't the only things Hypes makes from his exotic wood collection.
On one basement wall he keeps a large map of the United States. On every state is tacked a tiny wooden bell, carved by Hypes himself, out of that state's official tree.
"I've got them all except four," he said.
Still missing are Alaska's Sitka spruce, Hawaii's kukui tree, New Mexico's pinyon, and Nevada's single-leaf pinyon.
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ARNE KUHLMANN/Staff. 1. They're teaching aids atby CNBVirginia Tech: Wayne Hypes displays an egg he's turned on his
lathe. Tech's forestry department uses them in their wood
identification class. 2. The collection even includes a poison ivy
egg: Hypes' egg display is mounted on a wall of his basement.|