Terry and Lillee Clark

Terry and Lillee Clark
Self-described “outdoors-y people” Terry and Lillee Clark have found their niche. The couple own and operate T&LC Gunstock Engraving and Wood Art, and for three years, they have captured the essence of the outdoors in their artwork.

Semi-retired, the couple drive school buses, and work with wood to keep busy. While Terry specializes in scroll saw work, and the pair work together to make clocks and plaques, walking sticks and engraved eggs, Lillee's gun stock engraving is the outfit’s main concentration.

Using a small “pen”, much like a dentist’s drill, Lillee works with a pattern to create relief wildlife images, etchings, and basket-weave patterns on gunstocks. Her tool operates at 3200 RPM’s, making dust fly into the air, and a little racket to accompany the dust.

She wears ear protection, goggles with magnifying lenses, and either uses a dust mask or turns on her “dust-sucker” to keep the air clear. “This one is air driven. If it were oil driven, it would be much louder, like the kind you hear in a dentist’s office,” said Terry.

The results of her work are unique images that are truly unique. She usually works with a pattern, or artwork provided by the customer, and after resizing and copying the image to transparency paper at the local copy shop, she begins her work.

Some more detailed and intricate patterns, like the basket weave, she said, “mess with your eyes,” and she can only work on them for about fifteen minutes at a time.

Most guns come standard with a “checkering” pattern on the handle or the stock. Lillee doesn’t do checkering, since it is so common, but would replace it with a pretty oak leaf, paisley, or basket weave pattern.

She often finds herself repairing guns that were damaged. “One fellow brought to me a rare Weatherby. It was damaged, along with him, in a car accident. I did a really nice pattern on the gun, and it actually improved the value, since it was a collectors item,” says Lillee.

Terry added, laughing, “And when we went to visit him, he only takes it out once a month, polishes it, and puts it back in the gun cabinet, instead of shooting it!”

Lillee said that a lady wanting to do something nice for her husband would find an engraving on his gunstock as a perfect gift.
The couple has also collaborated on some pieces, like wildlife plaques. One piece they created is cut out in the shape of a moose antler, with moose etched on the surface, and the sky cut out around them, backed with a mirror. “It’s stuff you don’t see everywhere. It appeals to the outdoors-y crowd,” said Lillee.