Curled wood shavings sprinkled across Jim McLaughlin’s workspace, filling the cabin connected to the garage of his Warner home with fragrant Atlantic white cedar.
McLaughlin, a self-taught woodworker, was commissioned by the town’s beautification group to make a new welcome sign for Exit 8 on Interstate 89. The area’s existing sign had degraded over time and become infested with ants and termites.
With several carving tools and his glasses spread out across the project, McLaughlin meticulously molded a plain five-by-four-foot plank into a ‘Welcome to Warner’ sign true to previous designs.
“I really enjoy doing it,” he said. “I like giving joy to people.”
The sign displays a green mountain to represent Mount Kearsarge, a red covered bridge with a stream flowing under it and, of course, a large “Welcome to Warner” message.
Warner had two welcome signs built around the early 1980s: one at Exit 8 and another at Exit 9, both made by the now-defunct Warner’s Mens Club.
While both signs sustained severe damage over time, one seemed to have fared better than the other. Last year, the town made a plan to take the old Exit 8 sign and move it to Exit 9, and build a brand new sign at Exit 8.
Despite being in better shape, the old Exit 8 sign still needed several upgrades.
“It was quite hollowed out on the inside, and it was very nearly unreadable,” recalled Kathy Carson, a member of the beautification group.
So, before the sign was moved to Exit 9, McLaughlin helped restore it.
“I think that was about a two week project,” he said. “I just had to rip off the backing plywood and put a new piece on there, all kinds of sanding and repainting.”
It wasn’t the first time he made a sign for the town.
In 1994, McLaughlin made the entrance sign for the Pillsbury Free Library with his signature Celtic knots along the border. Then, he went on to make signs for The Local restaurant on Main Street, Jim Mitchell Community Park and the town’s two covered bridges in celebration of Warner’s 250th anniversary in 2024.
He expects he’ll finish with the new Exit 8 soon. Once it’s complete, Rhett Courser, a Warner resident specialized in blacksmithing, will give it a new metal frame to keep bugs out and “keep [the sign] there for another 40 years,” Carson said.
The sign will be held up by granite posts that the town plans to install when the weather gets warmer and the ground softens.
“It’s really nice, because this is truly a community effort,” Carson said. “It’s for the town of Warner.”